UC-NRLF 


$B    372    157 


I 


HERETICS 

»  i 

BY 

GILBERT  K.  CHESTERTON 


^       ^ 


\i 


i 


f 


NEW  YORK:  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

LONDON:  JOHN  LANE:  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 

MCMXIX 


Copyright,  1905,  by  John  Lane  Company 


cUs 


Twelfth  Edition 


*«*^^um  A 


c     c    c    •< 


THE -PLIMPTON 'PRESS -NORWOOD 'MASS -U'S  'A 


CONTENTS 


a]( 


'/. 


/I.  Introductory  Remarks  on  the  Im- 
portance OF  Othodoxy  .     . 

/il.   On  the  Negative  Spirit     .     . 

III.   On     Mr.     Rubyard     Kipling    and 
Making  the  World  Small  . 


Page 

II 
25 

38 
54 
68 


/-iV.   Mr.  Bernard  Shaw    .... 

V.   Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  and  the  Giants 

,^VI.   Christmas  and  the  ^Esthetes      .     .     92 

,>^II.   Omar  and  the  Sacred  Vine     .     .     .102 

VIII.   The  Mildness  OF  THE  Yellow  Press  .  113 

IX.   The  Moods  of  Mr.  George  Moore  .  128 

/X.   On  Sandals  and  Simplicity     •     .     .135 

^1.   Science  and  the  Savages    .     .     .     .142 

XII.   Paganism  and  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  .  153 

XIII.   Celts  and  Celtophiles 171 


42230 G 


Contents 


Page 

/'  XIV.   On  Certain  Modern  Writers  and 

THE  Institution  of  the  Family  .  179 

XV.   On    Smart    Novelists    and    the 

Smart  Set 196 

^--XVI.   On    Mr.   McCabe  and  a  Divine 

Frivolity     . 216 

XVII.  On  the  Wit  of  Whistler      ...  234 

XVIII.  The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation  247 

XIX.  Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums      .  267 

^---XX.  Concluding  Remarks  on  the  Im- 

PORTANCE  OF  ORTHODOXY     .      •      .285 


TO  MY  FATHER 


•  • 


HERE  TICS 

I — Introductory  Remarks  on  the  Importance 
of  Orthodoxy 

NOTHING  more  strangely  indicates 
an  enormous  and  silent  evil  of  mod- 
ern society  than  the  extraordinary 
use  which  is  made  nowadays  of  the 
word  "orthodox."  In  former  days  the  heretic 
was  proud  of  not  being  a  heretic.  It  was 
the  kingdoms  of  the  world  and  the  police 
and  the  judges  who  were  heretics.  He  was 
orthodox.  He  had  no  pride  in  having  re- 
belled against  them;  they  had  rebelled  against 
him.  The  armies  with  their  cruel  security,  the 
kings  with  their  cold  faces,  the  decorous  pro- 
cesses of  State,  the  reasonable  processes  of 
law — all  these  like  sheep  had  gone  astray. 
The  man  was  proud  of  being  orthodox,  was 
proud  of  being  right.  If  he  stood  alone  in 
a  howling  wilderness  he  was  more  than  a 
man;  he  was  a  church.  He  was  the  centre 
of  the  universe;  it  was  round  him  that  the 
stars  swung.  All  the  tortures  torn  out  of 
forgotten  hells  could  not  make  him  admit  that 
he  was  heretical.     But  a  few  modem  phrases 

II 


Heretics 


have  made  him  boast  of  it.  He  says,  with  a 
(  conscious  laugh,  "I  suppose  I  am  very  hereti- 
'  cal,"  and  looks  round  for  applause.  The 
word  *' heresy"  not  only  means  no  longer  being 
wrong;  it  practically  means  being  clear-headed 
and  courageous.  The  word  "orthodoxy"  not 
only  no  longer  means  being  right;  it  practically 
means  being  wrong.  All  this  can  mean  one 
thing,  and  one  thing  only.  It  means  that 
people  care  less  for  whether  they  are  philosophi- 
cally right.  For  obviously  a  man  ought  to  con- 
fess himself  crazy  before  he  confesses  himself 
heretical.  The  Bohemian,  with  a  red  tie,  ought 
to  pique  himself  on  his  orthodoxy.  The  dyna- 
miter, laying  a  bomb,  ought  to  feel  that,  what- 
ever else  he  is,  at  least  he  is  orthodox. 

It  is  foolish,  generally  speaking,  for  a  philoso- 
pher to  set  fire  to  another  philosopher  in  Smith- 
field  Market  because  they  do  not  agree  in  their 
theory  of  the  universe.  That  was  done  very 
frequently  in  the  last  decadence  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  it  failed  altogether  in  its  object.  But 
there  is  one  thing  that  is  infinitely  more  absurd 
and  unpractical  than  burning  a  man  for  his 

(philosophy.  This  is  the  habit  of  saying  that 
his  philosophy  does  not  matter,  and  this  is  done 
universally  in  the  twentieth  century,  in  the 
decadence  of  the  great  revolutionary  period. 

12 


Introductory  Remarks 


General  theories  are  everywhere  contemned; 
the  doctrine  of  the  Rights  of  Man  is  dismissed 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  Fall  of  Man.  Atheism 
itself  is  too  theological  for  us  to-day.  Revolu- 
tion itself  is  too  much  of  a  system;  liberty  it- 
self is  too  much  of  a  restraint.  We  will  have 
no  generalizations.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  has  put 
the  view  in  a  perfect  epigram:  "The  golden  rule 
is  that  there  is  no  golden  rule."  We  are  more 
^rid.inQreJa.di3Cuss  details  in  art,  politics,  lit^r-^ 
ature.  A  man's  opinion  on  tramcars  matters; 
his  opinion  on  Botticelli  matters;  his  opinion 
on  all  things  does  not  matter.  He  may  turn 
over  and  explore  a  million  objects,  but  he  must 
not  find  that  strange  object,  the  universe;  for 
if  he  does  he  will  have  a  religion,  and  be  lost. 
Everything  matters  —  except  everything. 

Examples  are  scarcely  needed  of  this  total 
levity  on  the  subject  of  cosmic  philosophy. 
Examples  are  scarcely  needed  to  show  that, 
whatever  else  we  think  of  as  affecting  practical 
affairs,  we  do  not  think  it  matters  whether  a 
man  is  a  pessimist  or  an  optimist,  a  Cartesian 
or  a  Hegelian,  a  materialist  or  a  spiritualist. 
Let  me,  however,  take  a  random  instance.  At 
any  innocent  tea-table  we  may  easily  hear  a 
man  say,  "Life  is  not  worth  living."  We  re- 
gard it  as  we  regard  the  statement  that  it  is 

13 


Heretics 


a  fine  day;  nobody  thinks  that  it  can  possibly 
have  any  serious  effect  on  the  man  or  on  the 
world.  And  yet  if  that  utterance  were  really 
believed,  the  world  would  stand  on  its  head. 
Murderers  would  be  given  medals  for  saving 
men  from  life;  firemen  would  be  denounced 
for  keeping  men  from  death;  poisons  would 
be  used  as  medicines;  doctors  would  be  called 
in  when  people  were  well;  the  Royal  Humane 
Society  would  be  rooted  out  like  a  horde  of 
assassins.  Yet  we  never  speculate  as  to  whether 
the  conversational  pessimist  will  strengthen  or 
disorganize  society;  for  we  are  convinced  that 
theories  do  not  matter. 

This  was  certainly  not  the  idea  of  those 
who  introduced  our  freedom.  When  the  old 
Liberals  removed  the  gags  from  all  the  heresies, 
their  idea  was  that  religious  and  philosophical 
discoveries  might  thus  be  made.  Their  view 
was  that  cosmic  truth  was  so  important  that 
every  one  ought  to  bear  independent  testimony. 
The  modern  idea  is  that  cosmic  truth  is  so 
unimportant  that  it  cannot  matter  what  any 
one  says.  The  former  freed  inquiry  as  men 
loose  a  noble  hound;  the  latter  frees  inquiry  as 
men  fling  back  into  the  sea  a  fish  unfit  for  eat- 
ing. Never  has  there  been  so  little  discussion 
about  the  nature  of  men  as  now^,  when,  for  the 

14 


Introductory  Remarks 


first  time,  any  one  can  discuss  it.  The  old  re- 
striction meant  that  only  the  orthodox  were 
allowed  to  discuss  religion.  Modern  liberty 
means  that  nobody  is  allowed  to  discuss  it. 
Good  taste,  the  last  and  vilest  of  human  super- 
stitions, has  succeeded  in  silencing  us  where  all 
the  rest  have  failed.  Sixty  years  ago  it  was 
bad  taste  to  be  an  avowed  atheist.  Then  came 
the  Bradlaughites,  the  last  religious  men,  the 
last  men  who  cared  about  God ;  but  they  could 
not  alter  it.  It  is  still  bad  taste  to  be  an  avowed 
atheist.  But  their  agony  has  achieved  just  this 
—  that  now  it  is  equally  bad  taste  to  be  an 
avowed  Christian.  Emancipation  has  only 
locked  the  saint  in  the  same  tower  of  silence  as 
the  heresiarch.  Then  we  talk  about  Lord 
Anglesey  and  the  weather,  and  call  it  the  com- 
plete liberty  of  all  the  creeds. 
^But  there  are  some  people,  nevertheless  — 
and  I  am  one  of  them  —  who  think  that  the  most 
practical  and  important  thing  about  a  man  is 
still  his  view  of  the  universe.  We  think  that 
for  a  landlady  considering  a  lodger,  it  is  im- 
portant to  know  his  income,  but  still  more 
important  to  know  his  philosophy.  We  think 
that  for  a  general  about  to  fight  an  enemy,  it 
is  important  to  know  the  enemy's  numbers,  *but 
still  more  important  to  know  the  enemy's  phi- 

15 


Heretics 


losophy.  We  think  the  question  is  not  whether 
the  theory  of  the  cosmos  affects  matters,  but 
whether,  in  the  long  run,  anything  else  affects 
them.  In  the  fifteenth  century  men  cross-ex- 
amined and  tormented  a  man  because  he 
preached  some  immoral  attitude;  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  we  feted  and  flattered  Oscar 
Wilde  because  he  preached  such  an  attitude, 
and  then  broke  his  heart  in  penal  servitude  be- 
cause he  carried  it  out.  It  may  be  a  question 
which  of  the  two  methods  was  the  more  cruel; 
there  can  be  no  kind  of  question  which  was  the 
more  ludicrous.  The  age  of  the  Inquisition 
has  not  at  least  the  disgrace  of  having  produced 
a  society  which  made  an  idol  of  the  very  same 
man  for  preaching  the  very  same  things  which 
it  made  him  a  convict  for  practising. 

Now,  in  our  time,  philosophy  or  religion, 
our  theory,  that  is,  about  ultimate  things,  has 
been  driven  out,  more  or  less  simultaneously, 
from  two  fields  which  it  used  to  occupy.  Gen- 
eral ideals  used  to  dominate  literature.  They 
have  been  driven  out  by  the  cry  of  "art  for  art's 
sake."  General  ideals  used  to  dominate  poli- 
tics. They  have  been  driven  out  by  the  cry 
of  "efficiency,"  which  may  roughly  be  trans- 
lated as  "politics  for  politics'  sake."  Persist- 
ently for   the  last  twenty  years  the  ideals  of 

i6 


Introductory  Remarks 


order  or  liberty  have  dwindled  in  our  books; 
the  ambitions  of  wit  and  eloquence  have 
dwindled  in  our  parliaments.  Literature  has 
purposely  become  less  political;  politics  have 
purposely  become  less  literary.  General  theories 
of  the  relation  of  things  have  thus  been  extruded 
from  both;  and  we  are  in  a  position  to  ask, 
*'What  have  we  gained  or  lost  by  this  extrusion  ? 
Is  literature  better,  is  politics  better,  for  having 
discarded  the  moralist  and  the  philosopher?" 

When  everything  about  a  people  is  for  the 
time  growing  weak  and  ineffective,  it  begins 
to  talk  about  efficiency.  So  it  is  that  when  a 
man's  body  is  a  wreck  he  begins,  for  the  first 
time,  to  talk  about  health.  Vigorous  organisms 
talk  not  about  their  processes,  but  about  their 
aims.  There  cannot  be  any  better  proof  of 
the  physical  efficiency  of  a  man  than  that  he 
talks  cheerfully  of  a  journey  to  the  end  of  the 
world.  And  there  cannot  be  any  better  proof 
of  the  practical  efficiency  of  a  nation  than  that 
it  talks  constantly  oS  a^  journey  to  the  end  of 
the  world,  a  journey  to  the  Judgment  Day  and 
the  New  Jerusalem.  There  can  be  no  stronger 
sign  of  a  coarse  material  health  than  the  ten- 
dency to  run  after  high  and  wild  ideals;  it  is  in 
t;ie  tirst  exuberance  of  infancy  that  we  cry  for 
he  moo  a.    None  of  the  strong  men  in  the 

17 


Heretics 


strong  ages  would  have  understood  what  you 
meant  by  working  for  efficiency.  Hildebrand 
would  have  said  that  he  was  working  not  for 
efficiency,  but  for  the  Catholic  Church.  Danton 
would  have  said  that  he  was  working  not  for 
efficiency,  but  for  liberty,  equality,  and  frater- 
nity. Even  if  the  ideal  of  such  men  were 
simply  the  ideal  of  kicking  a  man  downstairs, 
they  thought  of  the  end  like  men,  not  of  the 
process  like  paralytics.  They  did  not  say, 
^^Efficiently  elevating  my  right  leg,  using,  you 
will  notice,  the  muscles  of  the  thigh  and  calf, 

which  are  in  excellent  order,  I "    Their 

feeling  was  quite  different.  They  were  so 
filled  with  the  beautiful  vision  of  the  man  lying 
flat  at  the  foot  of  the  staircase  that  in  that 
ecstasy  the  rest  followed  in  a  flash.  In  prac- 
tice, the  habit  of  generalizing  and  idealizing 
did  not  by  any  means  mean  worldly  weakness. 
The  time  of  big  theories  was  the  time  of  big 
results.  In  the  era  of  sentiment  and  fine  words, 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  men  were 
really  robust  and  effective.  The  sentiment- 
alists conquered  Napoleon.  The  cynics  could 
not  catch  De  Wet.  A  hundred  years  ago  our 
affairs  for  good  or  evil  were  wielded  trium- 
phantly by  rhetoricians.  Now  our  affairs  are 
hopelessly   muddled    by    strong,    silent   men. 

i8 


Introductory  Remarks 


And  just  as  this  repudiation  of  big  words  and 
big  visions  has  brought  forth  a  race  of  small 
men  in  politics,  so  it  has  brought  forth  a  race^'' 
of  small  men  in  the  arts.  Our  modern  poli- 
ticians claim  the  colossal  license  of  Csesar  and 
the  Superman,  claim  that  they  are  too  practical 
to  be  pure  and  too  patriotic  to  be  moral;  but 
the  upshot  of  it  all  is  that  a  mediocrity  is 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer.  Our  new  artistic 
philosophers  call  for  the  same  moral  license, 
for  a  freedom  to  wreck  heaven  and  earth  with 
their  energy;  but  the  upshot  of  it  all  is  that  a 
mediocrity  is  Poet  Laureate.  I  do  not  say 
that  there  are  no  stronger  men  than  these;  but ., 
will  any  one  say  that  there  are  any  men  stronger 
than  those  men  of  old  who  were  dominated  by 
their  philosophy  and  steeped  in  their  religion? 
Whether  bondage  be  better  than  freedom  may 
be  discussed.  But  that  their  bondage  came  to 
more  than  our  freedom  it  will  be  difficult  for 
any  one  to  deny. 

The  theory  of  the  unmorality  of  art  has 
established  itself  firmly  in  the  strictly  artistic 
classes.  They  are  free  to  produce  anything 
they  like.  They  are  free  to  write  a  ^'Paradise 
Lost"  in  which  Satan  shall  conquer  God. 
They  are  free  to  write  a  '^Divine  Comedy'*  in 
which  heaven  shall  be  under  the  floor  of  hell. 

19 


Heretics 


And  what  have  they  done?  Have  they  pro- 
duced in  their  universaHty  anything  grander 
or  more  beautiful  than  the  things  uttered  by 
the  fierce  Ghibbeline  Catholic,  by  the  rigid 
Puritan  schoolmaster?  We  know  that  they 
have  produced  only  a  few  roundels.  Milton 
does  not  merely  beat  them  at  his  piety,  he  beats 
them  at  their  own  irreverence.  In  all  their 
little  books  of  verse  you  will  not  find  a  finer 
defiance  of  God  than  Satan's.  Nor  will  you 
find  the  grandeur  of  paganism  felt  as  that  fiery 
Christian  felt  it  who  described  Faranata  lifting 
his  head  as  in  disdain  of  hell.  And  the  reason 
is  very  obvious.  Blasphemy  is  an  artistic  effect, 
because  blasphemy  depends  upon  a  philosophi- 
cal conviction.  Blasphemy  depends  upon  be- 
lief, and  is  fading  with  it.  If  any  one  doubts 
this,  let  him  sit  down  seriously  and  try  to  think 
blasphemous  thoughts  about  Thor.  I  think 
his  family  will  find  him  at  the  end  of  the  day 
in  a  state  of  some  exhaustion. 

Neither  in  the  world  of  politics  nor  that  of 
literature,  then,  has  the  rejection  of  general 
theories  proved  a  success.  It  may  be  that 
there  have  been  many  moonstruck  and  mis- 
leading ideals  that  have  from  time  to  time  per- 
plexed mankind.  But  assuredly  there  has 
been  no  ideal  in  practice  so  moonstruck  and 

20 


Introductory  Remarks 


misleading  as  the  ideal  of  practicality.  Nothing 
has  lost  so  many  opportunities  as  the  oppor- 
tunism of  Lord  Rosebery.  He  is,  indeed,  a 
standing  symbol  of  this  epoch  —  the  man  who 
is  theoretically  a  practical  man,  and  practically 
more  unpractical  than  any  theorist.  Nothing 
in  this  universe  is  so  unwise  as  that  kind  of 
worship  of  worldly  wisdom.  A  man  who  is  \ 
perpetually  thinking  of  whether  this  race  or  that  \ 
race  is  strong,  of  whether  this  cause  or  that  1 
cause  is  promising,  is  the  man  who  will  never 
believe  in  anything  long  enough  to  make  it 
succeed.  The  opportunist  politician  is  like 
a  man  who  should  abandon  billiards  because 
he  was  beaten  at  billiards,  and  abandon  golf 
because  he  was  beaten  at  golf.  There  is  nothing 
which  is  so  weak  for  working  purposes  as  this 
enormous  importance  attached  to  immediate 
victory.  There  is  nothing  that  fails  like  success. 
And  having  discovered  that  opportunism 
does  f ailp  I  have  been  induced  to  look  at  it 
more  largely,  and  in  consequence  to  see  that 
it  must  fail.  I  perceive  that  it  is  far  more 
practical  to  begin  at  the  beginning  and  discuss 
theories.  I  see  that  the  men  who  killed  each 
other  about  the  orthodoxy  of  the  Homoousion 
were  far  more  sensible  than  the  people  who  are 
quarrelling  about  the  Education  Act.    For  the 


Heretics 


Christian  dogmatists  were  trying  to  establish  a 
reign  of  holiness,  and  trying  to  get  defined,  first 
of  all,  what  was  really  holy.     But  our  modern 
educationists  are  trying  to  bring  about  a  re- 
ligious   liberty    without    attempting    to    settle 
whatJs  religion  or  what  is  liberty.     If  the  old 
priests  forced  a  st^ement  on  mankind,  at  least 
they  previously  took  some  trouble  to  make  it 
lucid.     It  has  been  left  for  the  modern  mobs 
of  Anglicans  and  Nonconformists  to  persecute 
for  a  doctrine  without  even  stating  it. 
/    For  these  reasons,  and  for  many  more,  I  for 
/one  have  come  to  believe  in  going  back  to 
(  fundamentals.     Such   is   the   general   idea   of 
\  this  book.     I  wish  to  deal  with  my  most  dis- 
jtinguished  contemporaries,  not  personally  or  in 
/a  merely  literary  manner,  but  in  relation  to  the 
'  real  body  of  doctrine  which  they  teach.     I  am 
not  concerned  with  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  as  a 
vivid  artist  or  a  vigorous  personality;  I  am  con- 
cerned with  him  as  a  Heretic  —  that  is  to  say, 
a  man  whose  view  of  things  has  the  hardihood 
to  differ  from  mine.     I  am  not  concerned  with 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  as  one  of  the  most  brilliant 
and  one  of  the  most  honest  men  alive;  I  am 
concerned  with  him  as  a  Heretic  —  that  is  to 
say,  a  man  whose  philosophy  is  quite  solid, 
quite  coherent,  and  quite  wrong.     I  revert  to 

22 


Introductory  Remarks 


the  doctrinal  methods  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, inspired  by  the  general  hope  of  getting 
something  done. 

Suppose  that  a  great  commotion  arises  in 
the  street  about  something,  let  us  say  a  lamp- 
post, which  many  influential  persons  desire  to 
pull  down.  A  grey-clad  monk,  who  is  the 
spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages,  is  approached  upon 
the  matter,  and  begins  to  say,  in  the  arid  manner 
of  the  Schoolmen,  /^Let  us  first  of  all  consider, 
my  brethren,  the  value  of  Light.  If  Light  be 
in  itself  good "  At  this  point  he  is  some- 
what excusably  knocked  down.  All  the  people 
make  a  rush  for  the  lamp-post,  the  lamp-post 
is  down  in  ten  minutes,  and  they  go  about  con- 
gratulating each  other  on  their  unmediaeval  prac- 
ticality. But  as  things  go  on  they  do  not  work 
out  so  easily.  Some  people  have  pulled  the 
lamp-post  down  because  they  wanted  the  elec- 
tric light;  some  because  they  wanted  old  iron; 
some  because  they  wanted  darkness,  because 
their  deeds  were  evil.  Some  thought  it  not 
enough  of  a  lamp-post,  some  too  much;  some 
acted  because  they  wanted  to  smash  municipal 
machinery ;  some  because  they  wanted  to  smash 
something.  And  there  is  war  in  the  night,  no 
man  knowing  whom  he  strikes.  So,  gradually 
and  inevitably,  to-day,  to-morrow,  or  the  next 

2-1 


Heretics 


day,  there  comes  back  the  conviction  that  the 
monk  was  right  after  all,  and  that  all  depends 
on  what  is  the  philosophy  of  Light.  Only  what 
we  might  have  discussed  under  the  gas-lamp, 
we  now  must  discuss  in  the  dark. 


34 


II — On  the  Negative  Spirit 


MUCH  has  been  said,  and  said 
truly,  of  the  monkish  morbidity, 
of  the  hysteria  which  has  often 
gone  with  the  visions  of  hermits 
or  nuns.  But  let  us  never  forget  that  this 
visionary  religion  is,  in  one  sense,  necessarily 
more  wholesome  than  our  modern  and  reason- 
able morality.  It  is  more  wholesome  for  this 
reason,  that  it  can  contemplate  the  idea  of  suc- 
cess or  triumph  in  the  hopeless  fight  towards 
the  ethical  ideal,  in  what  Stevenson  called,  with 
his  usual  startling  felicity,  ''the  lost  fight  of 
virtue."  A  modern  morality,  on  the  other 
hand,  can  only  point  with  absolute  conviction 
to  the  horrors  that  follow  breaches  of  law;  its 
only  certainty  is  a  certainty  of  ill.  It  can  only 
point  to  imperfection.  It  has  no  perfection  to 
point  to.  But  the  monk  meditating  upon 
Christ  of  Buddha  has  in  his  mind  an  image  of 
perfect  health,  a  thing  of  clear  colours  and 
clean  air.  He  may  contemplate  this  ideal 
wholeness  and  happiness  far  more  than  he 
ought;  he  may  contemplate  it  to  the  neglect  or 
exclusion  of  essential  things;  he  may  contem- 
plate it  until  he  has  become  a  dreamer  or  a 

25 


Heretics 


driveller;  but  still  it  is  wholeness  and  happiness 
that  he  is  contemplating.  He  may  even  go 
mad ;  but  he  is  going  mad  for  the  love  of  sanity. 
But  the  modern  student  of  ethics,  even  if  he 
remains  sane,  remains  sane  from  an  insane 
dread  of  insanity. 

The  anchorite  rolling  on  the  stones  in  a 
frenzy  of  submission  is  a  healthier  person  funda- 
\  mentally  than  many  a  sober  man  in  a  silk  hat 
who  is  walking  down  Cheapside.  For  many 
such  are  good  only  through  a  withering  knowl- 
edge of  evil.  I  am  not  at  this  moment  claim- 
ing for  the  devotee  anything  more  than  this 
primary  advantage,  that  though  he  may  be 
making  himself  personally  weak  and  miserable, 
he  is  still  fixing  his  thoughts  largely  on  gigantic 
strength  and  happiness,  on  a  strength  that  has 
no  limits,  and  a  happiness  that  has  no  end. 
Doubtless  there  are  other  objections  which  can 
be  urged  without  unreason  against  the  influence 
of  gods  and  visions  in  morality,  whether  in  the 
cell  or  street.  But  this  advantage  the  mystic 
morality  must  always  have  —  it  is  always 
jollier..  A  young  man  may  keep  himself  from 
vice  by  continually  thinking  of  disease.  He 
may  keep  himself  from  it  also  by  continually 
thinking  of  the  Virgin  Mary.  There  may  be 
question    about   which   method    is   the   more 

2^ 


On  the  Negative  Spirit 


reasonable,  or  even  about  which  is  the  more 
efficient.  But  surely  there  can  be  no  question 
about  which  is  the  more  wholesome. 

I  remember  a  pamphlet  by  that  able  and 
sincere  secularist,  Mr.  G.  W.  Foote,  which 
contained  a  phrase  sharply  symbolizing  and 
dividing  these  two  methods.  The  pamphlet 
was  called  "Beer  and  Bible,''  those  two  very 
noble  things,  all  the  nobler  for  a  conjunction 
which  Mr.  Foote,  in  his  stern  old  Puritan  way, 
seemed  to  think  sardonic,  but  which  I  confess 
to  thinking  appropriate  and  charming.  I  have 
not  the  work  by  me,  but  I  remember  that  Mr. 
Foote  dismissed  very  contemptuously  any  at- 
tempts to  deal  with  the  problem  of  strong  drink 
by  religious  offices  or  intercessions,  and  said 
that  a  picture  of  a  drunkard's  liver  would  be 
more  efficacious  in  the  matter  of  temperance 
than  any  prayer  or  praise.  In  that  picturesque 
expression,  it  seems  to  me,  is  perfectly  embodied 
the  incurable  morbidity  of  modem  ethics.  In 
that  temple  the  lights  are  low,  the  crowds  kneel, 
the  solemn  anthems  are  uplifted.  But  that 
upon  the  altar  to  which  all  men  kneel  is  no 
longer  the  perfect  flesh,  the  body  and  substance 
of  the  perfect  man ;  it  is  still  flesh,  but  it  is  dis- 
eased.    It  is  the  drunkard's  liver  of  the  New 


7 


Her&tics 


t 


Testament  that  is  marred  for  us,  which  we  take 
in  remembrance  of  him. 

Now,  it  is  this  great  gap  in  modem  ethics, 
the  absence  of  vivid  pictures  of  purity  and 
spiritual  triumph,  which  Hes  t  the  back  of  the 
real  objection  felt  by  so  many  sane  men  to  the 
realistic  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
If  any  ordinary  man  ever  said  that  he  was 
horrified  by  the  subjects  discussed  in  Ibsen  or 
Maupassant,  or  by  the  plain  language  in  which 
they  are  spoken  of,  that  ordinary  man  was  lying. 
The  average  conversation  of  average  men 
throughout  the  whole  of  modern  civilization  in 
every  class  or  trade  is  such  as  Zola  would  never 
dream  of  printing.  Nor  is  the  habit  of  writing 
thus  of  these  things  a  new  habit.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  is  the  Victorian  prudery  and  silence 
which  is  new  still,  though  it  is  already  dying. 
The  tradition  of  calling  a  spade  a  spade  starts 
very  early  in  our  literature  and  comes  down 
very  late.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  ordinary 
honest  man,  whatever  vague  account  he  may 
have  given  of  his  feelings,  was  not  either  dis- 
gusted or  even  annoyed  at  the  candour  of  the 
modems.  What  disgusted  him,  and  very  justly, 
was  not  the  presence  of  a  clear  realism,  but  the 
absence  of  a  clear  ideal*  ,m.  Strong  and  genuine 
religious  sentiment  has  never  had  any  objection 

28 


On  the  Negative  Spirit 


to  realism;  on  the  contrary,  religion  was  ^he 
realistic  thing,  the  brutal  thing,  the  thing  that 
called  names.  This  is  the  great  difference 
between  some  recent  developments  of  Non- 
conformity and  th;.  great  Puritanism  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  It  was  the  whole  poiii: 
of  the  Puritans  that  they  cared  nothing  for 
decency.  Modem  Nonconformist  newspapers 
distinguish  themselves  by  suppressing  precisely 
those  nouns  and  adjectives  which  the  founders 
of  Nonconformity  distinguished  themselves  by 
flinging  at  kings  and  queens.  But  if  it  was  a 
chief  claim  of  religion  that  it  spoke  plainly  about 
evil,  it  was  the  chief  claim  of  all  that  it  spoke' 
plainly  about  good.  The  thing  which  is  re- 
sented, and,  as  I  think,  rightly  resented,  in  that 
great  modern  literature  of  which  Ibsen  is  typi- 
cal, is  that  while  the  eye  that  can  perceive  what 
are  the  wrong  things  increases  in  an  uncanny 
and  devouring  clarity,  the  eye  which  sees  what 
things  are  right  is  growing  mistier  and  mistier 
every  moment,  till  it  goes  almost  blind  with 
doubt.  If  we  compare,  let  us  say,  the  morality 
of  the  "Divine  Comedy"  with  the  morality  of 
Ibsen's  Ghosts,  we  shall  see  all  that  modem 
ethics  have  really  done.  No  one,  I  imagine, 
will  accuse  the  author  of  ^  '^Inferno"  of  an 
early  Victorian  pmdishness  or  a  Podsnapian 

39 


Heretics 


optimism.  But  Dante  describes  three  moral 
instruments  —  Heaven,  Purgatory,  and  Hell, 
the  vision  of  perfection,  the  vision  of  improve- 
ment, and  the  vision  of  failure.  Ibsen  has  only 
one  —  Hell.  It  is  often  said,  and  with  perfect 
truth,  that  no  one  could  read  a  play  like  Ghosts 
and  remain  indifferent  to  the  necessity  of  an 
ethical  self-command.  That  is  quite  true,  and 
the  same  is  to  be  said  of  the  most  monstrous 
and  material  descriptions  of  the  eternal  fire. 
It  is  quite  certain  that  realists  like  Zola  do  in 
one  sense  promote  morality  —  they  promote 
it  in  the  sense  in  which  the  hangman  promotes 
it,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  devil  promotes  it. 
But  they  only  affect  that  small  minority  which 
will  accept  any  virtue  as  long  as  we  do  not  ask 
them  for  the  virtue  of  courage.  Most  healthy 
people  dismiss  these  moral  dangers  as  they 
dismiss  the  possibility  of  bombs  or  microbes. 
Modem  realists  are  indeed  Terrorists,  like  the 
dynamiters;  and  they  fail  just  as  much  in  their 
effort  to  create  a  thrill.  Both  realists  and  dyna- 
miters are  well-meaning  people  engaged  in 
the  task,  so  obviously  ultimately  hopeless,  of 
using  science  to  promote  morality. 

I  do  not  wish  the  reader  to  confuse  me  for  a 
moment  with  those  vague  persons  who  imagine 
that  Ibsen  is  what  they  call  a  pessimist.    There 

30 


On  the  Negative  Spirit 


are  plenty  of  wholesome  people  in  Ibsen,  plenty 
of  good  people,  plenty  of  happy  people,  plenty 
of  examples  of  men  acting  wisely  and  things 
ending  well.  That  is  not  my  meaning.  My 
meaning  is  that  Ibsen  has  throughout,  and 
does  not  disguise,  a  certain  vagueness  and  a 
changing  attitude  as  well  as  a  doubting  attitude 
towards  what  is  really  wisdom  and  virtue  in 
this  life  —  a  vagueness  which  contrasts  very 
remarkably  with  the  decisiveness  with  which 
he  pounces  on  something  which  he  perceives 
to  be  a  root  of  evil,  some  convention,  some  de- 
ception some  ignorance.  We  know  that  the 
hero  of  Ghosts  is  mad,  and  we  know  why  he  is 
mad.  We  do  also  know  that  Dr.  Stockman  is 
sane;  but  we  do  not  know  why  he  is  sane. 
Ibsen  does  not  profess  to  know  how  virtue  and 
happiness  are  brought  about,  in  the  sense  that 
he  professes  to  know  how  our  modern  sexual 
tragedies  are  brought  about.  Falsehood  works 
ruin  in  The  Pillars  of  Society ^  but  truth  works 
equal  ruin  in  the  The  Wild  Duck.  There  are  no 
cardinal  virtues  of  Ibsenism.  There  is  no  ideal 
man  of  Ibsen.  All  this  is  not  only  admitted, 
but  vaunted  in  the  most  valuable  and  thought- 
ful of  all  the  eulogies  upon  Ibsen,  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw's  *^  Quintessence  of  Ibsenism."  Mr.  Shaw 
sums  up  Ibsen's  teaching  in  the  phrase,  "The 

31 


Heretics 


golden  rule  is  that  there  is  no  golden  rule." 
In  his  eyes  this  absence  of  an  enduring  and 
positive  ideal,  this  absence  of  a  permanent  key 
to  virtue,  is  the  one  great  Ibsen  merit.  I  am 
not  discussing  now  with  any  fulness  whether 
this  is  so  or  not.  All  I  venture  to  point  out, 
with  an  increased  firmness,  is  that  this  omission, 
good  or  bad,  does  leave  us  face  to  face  with  the 
problem  of  a  human  consciousness  filled  with 
very  definite  images  of  evil,  and  with  no  definite 
image  of  good.  To  us  light  must  be  hence- 
forward the  dark  thing  —  the  thing  of  which 
we  cannot  speak.  To  us,  as  to  Milton's  devils 
in  Pandemonium,  it  is  darkness  that  is  visible. 
The  human  race,  according  to  religion,  fell 
once,  and  in  falling  gained  the  knowledge  of 
good  and  of  evil.  Now  we  have  fallen  a  second 
time,  and  only  the  knowledge  of  evil  remains 
to  us. 

A  great  silent  collapse,  an  enormous  unspoken 
disappointment,  has  in  our  time  fallen  on  our 
Northern  civilization.  All  previous  ages  have 
sweated  and  been  crucified  in  an  attempt  to 
realize  what  is  really  the  right  life,  what  was 
really  the  good  man.  A  definite  part  of  the 
modem  world  has  come  beyond  question  to 
the  conclusion  that  there  is  no  answer  to  these 
questions,  that  the  most  that  we  can  do  is  to 

32 


On  the  Negative  Spirit 


set  up  a  few  notice-boards  at  places  of  obvious 
danger,  to  warn  men,  for  instance,  against 
drinking  themselves  to  death,  or  ignoring  the 
mere  existence  of  their  neighbours.  Ibsen  is 
the  first  to  return  from  the  baffled  hunt  to  bring 
us  the  tidings  of  great  failure. 

Every  one  of  the  popular  modern  phrases  and 
ideals  is  a  dodge  in  order  to  shirk  the  problem 
of  what  is  good.  We  are  fond  of  talking  about 
"liberty;''  that,  as  we  talk  of  it,  is  a  dodge  to 
avoid  discussing  what  is  good.  We  are  fond  of 
talking  about  "progress;"  that  is  a  dodge  to 
avoid  discussing  what  is  good.  We  are  fond 
of  talking  about  "education;"  that  is  a  dodge  to 
avoid  discussing  what  is  good.  The  modern 
man  says,  "Let  us  leave  all  these  arbitrary 
standards  and  embrace  liberty."  This  is, 
logically  rendered,  "Let  us  not  decide  what  is 
good,  but  let  it  be  considered  good  not  to 
decide  it."  He  says,  "Away  with  your  old 
moral  formulae;  I  am  for  progress."  This, 
logically  stated,  means,  "Let  us  not  settle  what 
is  good ;  but  let  us  settle  whether  we  are  getting 
more  of  it."  He  says,  "Neither  in  religion  nor 
morality,  my  friend,  lie  the  hopes  of  the  race, 
but  in  education."  This,  clearly  expressed, 
means,  *•  We  cannot  decide  what  is  good,  but 
let  us  give  it  to  our  children." 

33 


Heretics 


Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  that  exceedingly  clear- 
sighted man,  has  pointed  out  in  a  recent  work 
that  this  has  happened  in  connection  with 
economic  questions.  The  old  economists,  he 
says,  made  generalizations,  and  they  were  (in 
Mr.  Wells's  view)  mostly  wrong.  But  the  new 
economists,  he  says,  seem  to  have  lost  the 
power  of  making  any  generalizations  at  all. 
And  they  cover  this  incapacity  with  a  general 
claim  to  be,  in  specific  cases,  regarded  as 
"experts,"  a  claim  "proper  enough  in  a  hair- 
dresser or  a  fashionable  physician,  but  indecent 
in  a  philosopher  or  a  man  of  science."  But  in 
spite  of  the  refreshing  rationality  with  which 
Mr.  Wells  has  indicated  this,  it  must  also  be 
said  that  he  himself  has  fallen  into  the  same 
enormous  modern  error.  In  the  opening  pages 
of  that  excellent  book  "Mankind  in  the 
Making,"  he  dismisses  the  ideals  of  art,  reli- 
gion, abstract  morality,  and  the  rest,  and  says 
that  he  is  going  to  consider  men  in  their  chief 
function,  the  function  of  parenthood.  He  is 
going  to  discuss  life  as  a  "tissue  of  births," 
He  is  not  going  to  ask  what  will  produce  satis- 
factory saints  or  satisfactory  heroes,  but  what 
will  produce  satisfactory  fathers  and  mothers. 
The  whole  is  set  forward  so  sensibly  that  it 
is  a  few  moments  at  least  before  the  reader 

34 


On  the  Negative  Spirit 


realizes  that  it  is  another  example  of  uncon-  J^ 
scious  shirking.  What  is  the  good  of  begetting 
a  man  until  we  have  settled  what  is  the  good  of 
being  a  man?  You  are  merely  handing  on  to 
him  a  problem  you  dare  not  settle  yourself.  It 
is  as  if  a  man  were  asked,  ^'What  is  the  use  of 
a  hammer?''  and  answered,  ''To  make  ham- 
mers;" and  when  asked,  ''And  of  those  ham- 
mers, what  is  the  use?''  answered,  "To  make 
hammers  again."  Just  as  such  a  man  would 
be  perpetually  putting  off  the  question  of  the 
ultimate  use  of  carpentry,  so  Mr.  Wells  and  all 
the  rest  of  us  are  by  these  phrases  successfully 
putting  off  the  question  of  the  ultimate  value  of 
the  l^uman  life. 

The  case  of  the  general  talk  of  "progress"  is, 
indeed,  an  extreme  one.  As  enunciated  to-day 
"progress"  is  simply  a  comparative  of  which 
we  have  not  settled  the  superlative.  We  meet 
every  ideal  of  religion,  patriotism,  beauty,  or 
brute  pleasure  with  the  alternative  ideal  of 
progress — that  is  to  say,  we  meet  every  pro- 
posal of  getting  something  that  we  know  about, 
with  an  alternative  proposal  of  getting  a  great 
deal  more  of  nobody  knows  what.  Progress, 
properly  understood,  has,  indeed,  a  most  digni- 
fied and  legitimate  meaning.  But  as  used  in 
opposition  to  precise  moral  ideals,  it  is  ludicrous. 

35 


Heretics 


So  far  from  it  being  the  truth  that  the  ideal  of 
progress  is  to  be  set  against  that  of  ethical  or 
religious  finality,  the  reverse  is  the  truth.  TTS^ 
body  has  any  business  to  use  the  word  "pro- 
gress" unless  he  has  a  definite  creed  and  a 
cast-iron  code  of  morals.  Nobody  can  be  pro- 
gressive without  being  doctrinal ;  I  might  almost 
say  that  nobody  can  be  progressive  without 
being  infallible — at  any  rate,  without  believing 
in  some  infallibility.  For  progress  by  its  very 
name  indicates  a  direction :  and  the  moment  we 
are  in  the  least  doubtful  about  the  direction,  we 
become  in  the  same  degree  doubtful  about  the 
progress.  Never  perhaps  since  the  beginning 
of  the  world  has  there  been  an  age  that  had  less 
right  to  use  the  word  "progress"  than  we.  \  In 
the  Catholic  twelfth  century,  in  the  philosophic 
eighteenth  century,  the  direction  may  have  been 
a  good  or  a  bad  one,  men  may  have  differed 
more  or  less  about  how  far  they  went,  and  in 
what  direction,  but  about  the  direction  they  did 
in  the  main  agree,  and  consequently  they  had 
the  genuine  sensation  of  progress.  But  it  is 
precisely  about  the  direction  that  we  disagree. 
Whether  the  future  excellence  lies  in  more  law 
or  less  law,  in  more  liberty  or  less  liberty; 
whether  property  will  be  finally  concentrated  or 
finally  cut  up;  whether  sexual  passion  will  reach 

36 


On  the  Negative  Spirit 


its  sanest  in  an  almost  virgin  intellectualism  or 
in  a  full  animal  freedom ;  whether  we  should  love 
everybody  with  Tolstoy,  or  spare  nobody  with 
Nietszche ;  —  these  are  the  things  about  which 
we  are  actually  fighting  most.  It  is  not  merely 
true  that  the  age  which  has  settled  least  what  is 
progress  is  this  ^'progressive"  age.  It  is,  more- 
over, true  that  the  people  who  have  settled  least 
what  is  progress  are  the  most  '^ progressive" 
people  in  it.  The  ordinary  mass,  the  men  who 
have  never  troubled  about  progress,  might  be 
trusted  perhaps  to  progress.  The  particular 
individuals  who  talk  about  progress  would 
certainly  fly  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven  when 
the  pistol-shot  started  the  race.  I  do  not, 
therefore,  say  that  the  word  *' progress"  is  un- 
meaning; I  say  it  is  unmeaning  without  the 
previous  definition  of  a  n^oral  doctrine,  and 
that  it  can  only  be  applied  to  groups  of  persons 
who  hold  that  doctrine  in  common.  Progress 
is  not  an  illegitimate  word,  but  it  is  logically 
evident  that  it  is  illegitimate  for  us.  It  is  a 
sacred  word,  a  word  which  could  only  rightly 
be  used  by  rigid  believers  and  in  the  ages  of 
faith. 


37 


Ill  —  On  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  and  making 
the  World  Small 

THERE  is  no  such  thing  on  earth  as 
an  uninteresting  subject  f  the  only 
thing  that  can  exist  is  an  uninter- 
ested person.  Nothing  is  more  keenly 
required  than  a  defence  of  bores.  When  Byron 
divided  humanity  into  the  bores  and  bored,  he 
omitted  to  notice  that  the  higher  qualities  exist 
entirely  in  the  bores,  the  lower  qualities  in  the 
bored,  among  whom  he  counted  himself.  The 
bore,  by  his  starry  enthusiasm,  his  solemn 
happiness,  may,  in  some  sense,  have  proved 
himself  poetical.  The  bored  has  certainly 
proved  himself  prosaic. 

We  might,  no  doubt,  find  it  a  nuisance  to 
count  all  the  blades  of  grass  or  all  the  leaves 
of  the  trees;  but  this  would  not  be  because  of 
our  boldness  or  gaiety,  but  because  of  our  lack 
of  boldness  and  gaiety.  The  bore  would  go 
onward,  bold  and  gay,  and  find  the  blades  of 
grass  as  splendid  as  the  swords  of  an  army. 
The  bore  is  stronger  and  more  joyous  than  we 
are;  he  is  a  demi-god  —  nay,  he  is  a  god.  For 
it  is  the  gods  who  do  not  tire  of  the  iteration 

38 


On  Mr,  Rudyard  Kipling 

of  things;  to  them  the  nightfall  is  always  new, 
and  the  last  rose  as  red  as  the  first. 

The  sense  that  everything  is  poetical  is  a 
thing  solid  and  absolute;  it  is  not  a  mere  matter 
of  phraseology  or  persuasion.  It  is  not  merely 
true,  it  is  ascertainable.  Men  may  be  chal- 
lenged to  deny  it;  men  may  be  challenged  to 
mention  anything  that  is  not  a  matter  of  poetry. 
I  remember  a  long  time  ago  a  sensible  sub- 
editor coming  up  to  me  with  a  book  in  his 
hand,  called  ^^Mr.  Smith,"  or  ''The  Smith 
Family,"  or  some  such  thing.  He  said,  "Well, 
you  won't  get  any  of  your  damned  mysticism 
out  of  this,"  or  words  to  that  effect.  I  am 
happy  to  say  that  I  undeceived  him;  but  the 
victory  was  too  obvious  and  easy.  In  most 
cases  the  name  is  unpoetical,  although  the  fact 
is  poetical.  In  the  case  of  Smith,  the  name  is 
so  poetical  that  it  must  be  an  arduous  and 
heroic  matter  for  the  man  to  live  up  to  it. 
The  name  of  Smith  is  the  name  of  the  one 
trade  that  even  kings  respected,  it  could  claim 
half  the  glory  of  that  arma  virumque  which  all 
epics  acclaimed.  The  spirit  of  the  smithy  is 
so  close  to  the  spirit  of  song  that  it  has  mixed 
in  a  million  poems,  and  every  blacksmith  is  a 
harmonious  blacksmith. 

Even  the  village  children  feel  that  in  some 

S9 


Heretics 


dim  way  the  smith  is  poetic,  as  the  grocer  and 
the  cobbler  are  not  poetic,  when  they  feast  on 
the  dancing  sparks  and  deafening  blows  in  the 
cavern  of  that  creative  violence.  The  brute 
repose  of  Nature,  the  passionate  cunning  of 
man,  the  strongest  of  earthly  metals,  the 
wierdest  of  earthly  elements,  the  unconquer- 
able iron  subdued  by  its  only  conqueror,  the 
wheel  and  the  ploughshare,  the  sword  and  the 
steam-hammer,  the  arraying  of  armies  and 
the  whole  legend  of  arms,  all  these  things  are 
written,  briefly  indeed,  but  quite  legibly,  on 
the  visiting-card  of  Mr.  Smith.  Yet  our 
novelists  call  their  hero  ^^Aylmer  Valence," 
which  means  nothing,  or  ^'Vernon  Raymond," 
which  means  nothing,  when  it  is  in  their  power 
to  give  him  this  sacred  name  of  Smith  —  this 
name  made  of  iron  and  flame.  It  would  be 
very  natural  if  a  certain  hauteur,  a  certain 
carriage  of  the  head,  a  certain  curl  of  the  lip, 
distinguished  every  one  whose  name  is  Smith. 
Perhaps  it  does;  I  trust  so.  Whoever  else 
are  parvenus,  the  Sfniths  are  not  parvenus. 
From  the  darkest  dawn  of  history  this  clan  has 
gone  forth  to  battle;  its  trophies  are  on  every 
hand;  its  name  is  everywhere;  it  is  older  than 
the  nations,  and  its  sign  is  the  Hammer  of 
Thor. 

40 


On  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling 

But  as  I  also  remarked,  it  is  not  quite  the 
usual  case.  It  is  common  enougn  that  common 
things  should  be  poetical;  it  is  not  so  common 
that  common  names  should  be  poetical.  In 
most  cases  it  is  the  name  that  is  the  obstacle. 
A  great  many  people  talk  as  if  this  claim  of  ours, 
that  all  things  are  poetical,  were  a  mere  literary 
ingenuity,  a  play  on  words.  Precisely  the  con- 
trary is  true.  It  is  the  idea  that  some  things 
are  not  poetical  which  is  literary,  which  is  a 
mere  product  of  words.  The  word  "signal- 
box"  is  unpoetical.  But  the  thing  signal-box 
is  not  unpoetical;  it  is  a  place  where  men,  in 
an  agony  of  vigilance,  light  blood-red  and  sea- 
green  fires  to  keep  other  men  from  death. 
That  is  the  plain,  genuine  description  of  what 
it  is;  the  prose  only  comes  in  with  what  it  is 
called.  The  word  "pillar-box"  is  unpoetical. 
But  the  thing  pillar-box  is  not  unpoetical;  it 
is  the  place  to  which  friends  and  lovers  commit 
their  messages,  conscious  that  when  they  have 
done  so  they  are  sacred,  and  not  to  be  touched, 
not  only  by  others,  but  even  (religious  touch!) 
by  themselves.  That  red  turret  is  one  of  the 
last  of  the  temples.  Posting  a  letter  and  getting 
married  are  among  the  few  things  left  that  are 
entirely  romantic;  for  to  be  entirely  romantic 
a    thing    must    be    irrevocable.    We    think    a 

41 


Heretics 


pillar-box  prosaic,  because  there  is  no  rhyme 
to  it.  We  think  a  pillar-box  unpoetical,  because 
we  have  never  seen  it  in  a  poem.  But  the 
bold  fact  is  entirely  on  the  side  of  poetry.  A 
signal-box  is  only  called  a  signal-box;  it  is  a 
house  of  life  and  death.  A  pillar-box  is  only 
called  a  pillar-box;  it  is  a  sanctuary  of  human 
words.  If  you  think  the  name  of  "Smith" 
prosaic,  it  is  not  because  you  are  practical  and 
sensible ;  it  is  because  you  are  too  much  affected 
with  literary  refinements.  The  name  shouts 
poetry  at  you.  If  you  think  of  it  otherwise, 
it  is  because  you  are  steeped  and  sodden  with 
verbal  reminiscences,  because  you  remember 
everything  in  Punch  or  Comic  Cuts  about  Mr. 
Smith  being  drunk  or  Mr.  Smith  being  hen- 
pecked. All  these  things  were  given  to  you 
poetical.  It  is  only  by  a  long  and  elaborate 
process  of  literary  effort  that  you  have  made 
them  prosaic. 

Now,  the  first  and  fairest  thing  to  say  about 
Rudyard  Kipling  is  that  he  has  borne  a  brilliant 
part  in  thus  recovering  the  lost  provinces  of 
poetry.  He  has  not  been  frightened  by  that 
brutal  materialistic  air  which  clings  only  to 
words;  he  has  pierced  through  to  the  roman- 
tic, imaginative  matter  of  the  things  themselves. 
He  has  perceived  the  significance  and  philos- 

42 


On  Mr,  Rudyard  Kipling 

ophy  of  steam  and  of  slang.  Steam  may  be, 
if  you  like,  a  dirty  by-product  of  science. 
Slang  may  be,  if  you  like,  a  dirty  by-product 
of  language.  But  at  least  he  has  been  among 
the  few  who  saw  the  divine  parentage  of  these 
things,  and  knew  that  where  there  is  smoke 
there  is  fire — that  is,  that  wherever  there  is  the 
foulest  of  things,  there  also  is  the  purest. 
Above  all,  he  has  had  something  to  say,  a 
definite  view  of  things  to  utter,  and  that  always 
means  that  a  man  is  fearless  and  faces  every- 
thing. For  the  moment  we  have  a  view  of  the 
universe,  we  possess  it. 

Now,  the  message  of  Rudyard  Kipling,  that 
upon  which  he  has  really  concentrated,  is  the 
only  thing  worth  worrying  about  in  him  or  in 
any  other  man.  He  has  often  written  bad 
poetry,  like  Wordsworth.  He  has  often  said 
silly  things,  like  Plato.  He  has  often  given 
way  to  mere  political  hysteria,  like  Gladstone. 
But  no  one  can  reasonably  doubt  that  he  means 
steadily  and  sincerely  to  say  something,  and 
the  only  serious  question  is,  What  is  that  which 
he  has  tried  to  say?  Perhaps  the  best  way  of 
stating  this  fairly  will  be  to  begin  with  that 
element  which  has  been  most  insisted  by  him- 
self and  by  his  opponents — I  mean  his  interest 
in  militarism.     But  when  we  are  seeking  for  the 

43 


Heretics 


<i 


real  merits  of  a  man  it  is  unwise  to  go  to  his 
/  enemies,  and  much  more  fooHsh  to  go  to 
^  himself. 

Now,  Mr.  Kipling  is  certainly  wrong  in  his 
worship  of  militarism,  but  his  opponents  are, 
generally  speaking,  quite  as  wrong  as  he.  The 
evil  of  militarism  is  not  that  it  shows  certain 
men  to  be  fierce  and  haughty  and  excessively 
warlike.  The  evil  of  militarism  is  that  it  shows 
most  men  to  be  tame  and  timid  and  excessively 
peaceable.  The  professional  soldier  gains  more 
and  more  power  as  the  general  courage  of  a 
community  declines.  Thus  the  Pretorian  guard 
became  more  and  more  important  in  Rome  as 
Rome  became  more  and  more  luxurious  and 
feeble.  The  military  man  gains  the  civil  power 
in  proportion  as  the  civilian  loses  the  military 
virtues.  And  as  it  was  in  ancient  Rome  so  it  is 
in  contemporary  Europe.  There  never  was  a 
time  when  nations  were  more  militarist.  There 
never  was  a  time  when  men  were  less  brave. 
All  ages  and  all  epics  have  sung  of  arms  and 
the  man;  but  we  have  effected  simultaneously 
the  deterioration  of  the  man  and  the  fantastic 
perfection  of  the  arms.  Militarism  demon- 
strated the  decadence  of  Rome,  and  it  demon- 
strates the  decadence  of  Prussia. 
And  unconsciously  Mr.  Kipling  has  proved 

44 


On  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling 

this,  and  proved  it  admirably.  For  in  so  far  as 
his  work  is  earnestly  understood  the  military 
trade  does  not  by  any  means  emerge  as  the 
most  important  or  attractive.  He  has  not 
written  so  well  about  soldiers  as  he  has  about 
railway  men  or  bridge  builders,  or  even  jour- 
nalists. The  fact  is  that  what  attracts  Mr. 
Kipling  to  militarism  is  not  the  idea  of  courage, 
but  the  idea  of  discipline.  There  was  far  more 
courage  to  the  square  mile  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
when  no  king  had  a  standing  army,  but  every 
man  had  a  bow  or  sword.  But  the  fascination 
of  the  standing  army  upon  Mr.  Kipling  is  not 
courage,  which  scarcely  interests  him,  but  dis- 
cipline, which  is,  when  all  is  said  and  done, 
his  primary  theme.  The  modern  army  is  not 
a  miracle  of  courage ;  it  has  not  enough  oppor- 
tunities, owing  to  the  cowardice  of  everybody 
else.  But  it  is  really  a  miracle  of  organization, 
and  that  is  the  truly  Kiplingite  ideal.  Kipling's 
subject  is  not  that  valour  which  properly  belongs 
to  war,  but  that  interdependence  and  efficiency 
which  belongs  quite  as  much  to  engineers,  or 
sailors,  or  mules,  or  railway  engines.  And 
thus  it  is  that  when  he  writes  of  engineers,  or 
sailors,  or  mules,  or  steam-engines,  he  writes  at 
his  best.  The  real  poetry,  the  ^^true  romance '* 
which  Mr.  Kipling  has  taught,  is  the  romance 

45 


Heretics 


of  the  division  of  labour  and  the  discipline  of 
all  the  trades.  He  sings  the  arts  of  peace  much 
more  accurately  than  the  arts  of  war.  And  his 
main  contention  is  vital  and  valuable.  Every- 
thing is  military  in  the  sense  that  everything 
depends  upon  obedience.  There  is  no  perfectly 
epicurean  corner;  there  is  no  perfectly  irrespon- 
sible place.  Ever3^where  men  have  made  the 
way  for  us  with  sweat  and  submission.  We 
may  fling  ourselves  into  a  hammock  in  a  fit  of 
divine  carelessness.  But  we  are  glad  that  the 
net-maker  did  not  make  the  hammock  in  a  fit 
of  divine  carelessness.  We  may  jump  upon  a 
child's  rocking-horse  for  a  joke.  But  we  are 
glad  that  the  carpenter  did  not  leave  the  legs  of  it 
unglued  for  a  joke.  So  far  from  having  merely 
preached  that  a  soldier  cleaning  his  side-arm  is 
to  be  adored  because  he  is  military,  Kipling 
at  his  best  and  clearest  has  preached  that  the 
baker  baking  loaves  and  the  tailor  cutting  coats 
is  as  military  as  anybody. 

Being  devoted  to  this  multitudinous  vision 
of  duty,  Mr.  Kipling  is  naturally  a  cosmopolitan. 
He  happens  to  find  his  examples  in  the  British 
Empire,  but  almost  any  other  empire  would  do 
as  well,  or,  indeed,  any  other  highly  civilized 
country.  That  which  he  admires  in  the  British 
army  he  would  find  even  more  apparent  in  the 

46 


On  Mr,  Rudyard  Killing 

German  army;  that  which  he  desires  in  the 
British  police  he  would  find  flourishing  in  the 
French  police.  The  ideal  of  discipline  is  not 
the  whole  of  life,  but  it  is  spread  over  the  whole 
of  the  world.  And  the  worship  of  it  tends  to 
confirm  in  Mr.  Kipling  a  certain  note  of  worldly 
wisdom,  of  the  experience  of  the  wanderer,  which 
is  one  of  the  genuine  charms  of  his  best  work. 
The  great  gap  in  his  mind  is  what  may  be 
roughly  called  the  lack  of  patriotism  —  that  is 
to  say,  he  lacks  altogether  the  faculty  of  attach- 
ing himself  to  any  cause  or  community  finally 
and  tragically;  for  all  finality  must  be  tragic. 
He  admires  England,  but  he  does  not  love  her; 
for  we  admire  things  with  reasons,  but  love 
them  without  reasons.  He  admires  England 
because  she  is  strong,  not  because  she  is  Eng- 
lish. There  is  no  harshness  in  saying  this,  for, 
to  do  him  justice,  he  avows  it  with  his  usual 
picturesque  candour.  In  a  very  interesting 
poem,  he  says  that — 

"7/  England  was  what  England  seems  " 

—  that  is,  weak  and  inefficient;  if  England  were 
not  what  (as  he  believes)  she  is — that  is,  power- 
ful and  practical  — 

**How  quick  we'd  chtick  *er/    But  she  ain't!" 
He  admits,  that  is,  that  his  devotion  is  the 

47 


Heretics 


result  of  a  criticism,  and  this  is  quite  enough 

to  put  it  in  another  category  altogether  from 

the  patriotism  of  the  Boers,  whom  he  hounded 

down  in   South  Africa.    In   speaking  of  the 

really  patriotic  peoples,  such  as  the  Irish,  he 

has  some  difficulty  in  keeping  a  shrill  irritation 

.  out  of  his  language.    The  frame  of  mind  which 

I  he  really  describes  with  beauty  and  nobility  is 

I  the  frame  of  mind  of  the  cosmopolitan  man  who 

has  seen  men  and  cities. 

"  For  to  admire  and  for  to  see, 
For  to  be'old  this  world  so  wide.'* 

f  He  is  a  perfect  master  of  that  light  melancholy 
I  with  which  a  man  looks  back  on  having  been 
the  citizen  of  many  communities,  of  that  light 
melancholy  with  which  a  man  looks  back  on 
having  been  the  lover  of  many  women.  He  is 
the  philanderer  of  the  nations.  But  a  man 
may  have  learnt  much  about  women  in  flirta- 
tions, and  still  be  ignorant  of  first  love;  a  man 
may  have  known  as  many  lands  as  Ulysses, 
and  still  be  ignorant  of  patriotism. 

Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  has  asked'  in  a  cele- 
brated epigram  what  they  can  know  of  England 
who  know  England  only.  It  is  a  far  deeper 
and  sharper  question  to  ask,  "What  can  they 
know  of  England  who  know  only  the  world?" 
for  the  world  does  not  include  England  any 

48 


On  Mr,  Rudyard  Kipling 

more  than  it  includes  the  Church.  The  moment 
we  care  for  anything  deeply,  the  world  —  that  is, 
all  the  other  miscellaneous  interests  —  becomes 
our  enemy.  Christians  showed  it  when  they 
talked  of  keeping  one's  self  ^*  unspotted  from 
the  world;"  but  lovers  talk  of  it  just  as  much 
when  they  talk  of  the  ^^  world  well  lost."  Astro- 
nomically speaking,  I  understand  that  England 
is  situated  on  the  world;  similarly,  I  suppose 
that  the  Church  was  a  part  of  the  world,  and 
even  the  lovers  inhabitants  of  that  orb.  But 
they  all  felt  a  certain  truth  —  the  truth  that  the 
moment  you  love  anything  the  world  becomes 
your  foe.  Thus  Mr.  Kipling  does  certainly  / 
know  the  world;  he  is  a  man  of  the  world, J 
with  all  the  narrowness  that  belongs  to  those* 
imprisoned  in  that  planet.  He  knows  England^  ^ 
as  an  intelligent  English  gentleman  knows 
Venice.  He  has  been  to  England  a  great 
many  times;  he  has  stopped  there  for  long 
visits.  But  he  does  not  belong  to  it,  or  to 
any  place;  and  the  proof  of  it  is  this,  that  he 
thinks  of  England  as  a  place.  The  moment 
we  are  rooted  in  a  place,  the  place  vanishes. 
We  live  like  a  tree  with  the  whole  strength  of 
the  universe. 

The  globe-trotter  lives  in  a  smaller  world    " 
than  the  peasant.    He  is  always  breathing  an 

49 


Heretics 


air  of  locality.  London  is  a  place,  to  be  com- 
pared to  Chicago;  Chicago  is  a  place,  to  be 
compared  to  Timbuctoo.  But  Timbuctoo  is 
not  a  place,  since  there,  at  least,  live  men  who 
regard  it  as  the  universe,  and  breathe,  not  an 
air  of  locality,  but  the  winds  of  the  world.  The 
man  in  the  saloon  steamer  has  seen  all  the 
races  of  men,  and  he  is  thinking  of  the  things 
that  divide  men  —  diet,  dress,  decorum,  rings 
in  the  nose  as  in  Africa,  or  in  the  ears  as  in 
Europe,  blue  paint  among  the  ancients,  or  red 
paint  among  the  modern  Britons.  The  man 
in  the  cabbage  field  has  seen  nothing  at  all; 
but  he  is  thinking  of  the  things  that  unite  men 
—  hunger  and  babies,  and  the  beauty  of  women, 
and  the  promise  or  menace  of  the  sky.  Mr.. 
|i  Kipling,  with  all  his  merits,  is  the  globe-trotter; 
'1  he  has  not  the  patience  to  become  part  of  any- 
'  thing.  So  great  and  genuine  a  man  is  not  to 
be  accused  of  a  merely  cynical  cosmopolitanism ; 
still,  his  cosmopolitanism  is  his  weakness.  That 
weakness  is  splendidly  expressed  in  one  of  his 
finest  poems,  ^^The  Sestina  of  the  Tramp 
Royal,"  in  which  a  man  declares  that  he  can 
endure  anything  in  the  way  of  hunger  or  horror, 
but  not  permanent  presence  in  one  place.  In 
this  there  is  certainly  danger.  The  more  dead 
and  dry  and  dusty  a  thing  is  the  more  it  travels 

50 


On  Mr,  Rudyard  Kipling 

about;  dust  is  like  this  and  the  thistle-down  and 
the  High  Commissioner  in  South  Africa.  Fer- 
tile things  are  somewhat  heavier,  like  the  heavy 
fruit  trees  on  the  pregnant  mud  of  the  Nile. 
In  the  heated  idleness  of  youth  we  were  all 
rather  inclined  to  quarrel  with  the  implication 
of  that  proverb  which  says  that  a  rolling  stone 
gathers  no  moss.  We  were  inclined  to  ask, 
^^Who  wants  to  gather  moss,  except  silly  old 
ladies?"  But  for  all  that  we  begin  to  perceive 
that  the  proverb  is  right.  The  rolling  stone 
rolls  echoing  from  rock  to  rock;  but  the  rolling 
stone  is  dead.  The  moss  is  silent  because  the 
moss  is  alive. 

The  truth  is  that  exploration  and  enlarge- 
ment make  the  world  smaller.  The  telegraph 
and  the  steamboat  make  the  world  smaller. 
The  telescope  makes  the  world  smaller;  it  is 
only  the  microscope  that  makes  it  larger. 
Before  long  the  world  will  be  cloven  with  a 
war  between  the  telescopists  and  the  micro- 
scopists.  The  first  study  large  things  and  live 
in  a  small  world;  the  second  study  small  things 
and  live  in  a  large  world.  It  is  inspiriting 
without  doubt  to  whizz  in  a  motor-car  round 
the  earth,  to  feel  Arabia  as  a  whirl  of  sand  or 
China  as  a  flash  of  rice-fields.  But  Arabia  is 
not  a  whirl  of  sand  and  China  is  not  a  flash  of 

51 


Heretics 


rice-fields.  They  are  ancient  civilizations  with 
strange  virtues  buried  like  treasures.  If  we 
wish  to  understand  them  it  must  not  be  as 
tourists  or  inquirers,  it  must  be  with  the  loyalty 
of  children  and  the  great  patience  of  poets.  To 
conquer  these  places  is  to  lose  them.  The 
man  standing  in  his  own  kitchen-garden,  with 
fairyland  opening  at  the  gate,  is  the  man  with 
large  ideas.  His  mind  creates  distance;  the 
motor-car  stupidly  destroys  it.  Modems  think 
of  the  earth  as  a  globe,  as  something  one  can 
easily  get  round,  the  spirit  of  a  schoolmistress. 
This  is  shown  in  the  odd  mistake  perpetually 
made  about  Cecil  Rhodes.  His  enemies  say 
that  he  may  have  had  large  ideas,  but  he  was 
a  bad  man.  His  friends  say  that  he  may  have 
been  a  bad  man,  but  he  certainly  had  large 
ideas.  The  truth  is  that  he  was  not  a  man 
essentially  bad,  he  was  a  man  of  much  geniality 
and  many  good  intentions,  but  a  man  with 
singularly  small  views.  There  is  nothing  large 
about  painting  the  map  red;  it  is  an  innocent 
game  for  children.  It  is  just  as  easy  to  think 
in  continents  as  to  think  in  cobble-stones.  The 
difficulty  comes  in  when  we  seek  to  know  the 
substance  of  either  of  them.  Rhodes'  prophe- 
cies about  the  Boer  resistance  are  an  admirable 
comment  on  how  the  ''large  ideas"  prosper 

52 


On  Mr,  Rudyard  Kipling 

when  it  is  not  a  question  of  thinking  in  conti- 
nents, but  of  understanding  a  few  two-legged 
men.  And  under  all  this  vast  illusion  of  the 
cosmopolitan  planet,  with  its  empires  and  its 
Reuter's  agency,  the  real  life  of  man  goes  on 
concerned  with  this  tree  or  that  temple,  with 
this  harvest  or  that  drinking-song,  totally 
uncomprehended,  totally  untouched.  And  it 
watches  from  its  splendid  parochialism,  possibly 
with  a  smile  of  amusement,  motor-car  civiliza- 
tion going  its  triumphant  way,  outstripping 
time,  consuming  space,  seeing  all  and  seeing 
nothing,  roaring  on  at  last  to  the  capture  of  the 
solar  system,  only  to  find  the  sun  cockney  and 
the  stars  suburban. 


S3 


IV  —  Mr,  Bernard  Shaw 


IN  the  glad  old  days,  before  the  rise  of 
modern  morbidities,  when  genial  old  Ibsen 
filled  the  world  with  wholesome  joy,  and 
the  kindly  tales  of  the  forgotten  Emile 
Zola  kept  our  firesides  merry  and  pure,  it  used 
to  be  thought  a  disadvantage  to  be  misunder- 
stood. It  may  be  doubted  whether  it  is  always 
or  even  generally  a  disadvantage.  The  man 
who  is  misunderstood  has  always  this  advan- 
tage over  his  enemies,  that  they  do  not  know 
his  weak  point  or  his  plan  of  campaign.  They 
go  out  against  a  bird  with  nets  and  against  a 
fish  with  arrows.  There  are  several  modem 
examples  of  this  situation.  Mr.  Chamberlain, 
for  instance,  is  a  very  good  one.  He  constantly 
eludes  or  vanquishes  his  opr^onents  because  his 
real  powers  and  deficiencies  .^re  quite  different  to 
those  with  which  he  is  credited,  both  by  friends 
and  foes.  His  friends  depict  him  as  a  strenuous 
man  of  action;  his  opponents  depict  hun  as  a 
coarse  man  of  business;  when,  as  a  fact,  he  is 
neither  one  nor  the  other,  but  an  admirable 
romantic  orator  and  romantic  actor.  He  has! 
one  power  which  is  the  soul  of  melodrama  —  the] 

54 


Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 


power  of  pretending,  even  when  backed  by  a 

huge  majority,  that  he  has  his  back  to  the  wall. 

For  all  mobs  are  so  far  chivalrous  that  their 

heroes  must  make  some  show  of  misfortune  — 

that  sort  of  hypocrisy  is  the  homage  that  strength 

pays  to  weakness.     He  talks  foolishly  and  yet 

very  finely  about  his  own  city  that  has  never 

deserted  him.     He  wears  a  flaming  and  fantastic 

flower,  like  a  decadent  minor  poet.    As  for  his 

bluffness  and  toughness  and  appeals  to  common 

sense,  all  that  is,  of  course,   simply  the  first 

trick  of  rhetoric.     He  fronts  his  audiences  with 

the  venerable  affectation  of  Mark  Antony  — 

"I  am  no  orator,  as  Brutus  is; 
But  as  you  know  me  all,  a  plain  blunt  man." 

It  is  the  whole  difference  between  the  aim  of 
the  orator  and  the  aim  of  any  other  artist,  such 
as  the  poet  or  the  sculptor.  The  aim  of  the 
sculptor  is  to  convince  us  that  he  is  a  sculptor; 
the  aim  of  the  orator  is  to  convince  us  that  he 
is  not  an  orator.  Once  let  Mr.  Chamberlain 
be  mistaken  for  a  practical  man,  and  his  game  is 
won.  He  has  only  to  compose  a  theme  on 
empire,  and  people  will  say  that  these  plain  men 
say  great  things  on  great  occasions.  He  has 
only  to  drift  in  the  large  loose  notions  common 
to  all  artists  of  the  second  rank,  and  people  will 
say  that  business  men  have  the  biggest  ideals 

55 


Heretics 


after  all.  All  his  schemes  have  ended  in  smoke ; 
he  has  touched  nothing  that  he  did  not  confuse. 
About  his  figure  there  is  a  Celtic  pathos;  like 
the  Gaels  in  Matthew  Arnold's  quotation,  ^^he 
went  forth  to  battle,  but  he  always  fell."  He  is 
a  mountain  of  proposals,  a  mountain  of  failures ; 
but  still  a  mountain.  And  a  mountain  is  always 
romantic. 

There  is  another  man  in  the  modem  world 
who  might  be  called  the  antithesis  of  Mr. 
Chamberlain  in  every  point,  who  is  also  a 
standing  monument  of  the  advantage  of  being 
misunderstood.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  is  always 
represented  by  those  who  disagree  with  him, 
and,  I  fear,  also  (if  such  exist)  by  those  who 
agree  with  him,  as  a  capering  humorist,  a 
dazzling  acrobat,  a  quick-change  artist.  It  is 
said  that  he  cannot  be  taken  seriously,  that  he 
will  defend  anything  or  attack  anything,  that 
he  will  do  anything  to  startle  and  amuse.  All 
this  is  not  only  untrue,  but  it  is,  glaringly,  the 
opposite  of  the  truth;  it  is  as  wild  as  to  say 
that  Dickens  had  not  the  boisterous  masculinity 
of  Jane  Austen.  The  whole  force  and  triumph 
of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  lie  in  the  fact  that  he  is 
a  thoroughly  consistent  man.  So  far  from  his 
power  consisting  in  jumping  through  hoops  or 
standing  on  his  head,  his  power  consists  in 

56 


Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 


holding  his  own  fortress  night  and  day.  He 
puts  the  Shaw  test  rapidly  and  rigorously  to 
everything  that  happens  in  heaven  or  earth. 
His  standard  never  varies.  The  thing  which 
weak-minded  revolutionists  and  weak-minded 
Conservatives  really  hate  (and  fear)  in  him,  is 
exactly  this,  that  his  scales,  such  as  they  are, 
are  held  even,  and  that  his  law,  such  as  it  is,  is 
justly  enforced.  You  may  attack  his  principles, 
as  I  do;  but  I  do  not  know  of  any  instance  in 
which  you  can  attack  their  application.  If  he 
dislikes  lawlessness,  he  dislikes  the  lawlessness 
of  Socialists  as  much  as  that  of  Individualists. 
If  he  dislikes  the  fever  of  patriotism,  he  dislikes 
it  in  Boers  and  Irishmen  as  well  as  in  English- 
men. If  he  dislikes  the  vows  and  bonds  of 
marriage,  he  dislikes  still  more  the  fiercer 
bonds  and  wilder  vows  that  are  made  by  law- 
less love.  If  he  laughs  at  the  authority  of 
priests,  he  laughs  louder  at  the  pomposity  of 
men  of  science.  If  he  condemns  the  irresponsi- 
bility of  faith,  he  condemns  with  a  sane  con- 
sistency the  equal  irresponsibility  of  art.  He 
has  pleased  all  the  bohemians  by  saying  that 
women  are  equal  to  men;  but  he  has  infuriated 
them  by  suggesting  that  men  are  equal  to 
women.  He  is  almost  mechanically  just;  he 
has   something   of   the    terrible    quality   of   a 

57 


Heretics 


machine.  The  man  who  is  really  wild  and 
whirling,  the  man  who  is  really  fantastic  and 
incalculable,  is  not  Mr.  Shaw,  but  the  average 
Cabinet  Minister.  It  is  Sir  Michael  Hicks- 
Beach  who  jumps  through  hoops.  It  is  Sir 
Henry  Fowler  who  stands  on  his  head.  The 
solid  and  respectable  statesman  of  that  type 
does  really  leap  from  position  to  position;  he 
is  really  ready  to  defend  anything  or  nothing; 
he  is  really  not  to  be  taken  seriously.  I  know 
perfectly  well  what  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  will  be 
saying  thirty  years  hence;  he  will  be  saying 
what  he  has  always  said.  If  thirty  years  hence 
I  meet  Mr.  Shaw,  a  reverent  being  with  a  silver 
beard  sweeping  the  earth,  and  say  to  him, 
*'One  can  never,  of  course,  make  a  verbal 
attack  upon  a  lady,"  the  patriarch  will  lift  his 
aged  hand  and  fell  me  to  the  earth.  We  know, 
I  say,  what  Mr.  Shaw  will  be  saying  thirty 
years  hence.  But  is  there  any  one  so  darkly 
read  in  stars  and  oracles  that  he  will  dare  to 
predict  what  Mr.  Asquith  will  be  saying  thirty 
years  hence? 

The  truth  is,  that  it  is  quite  an  error  to  sup- 
pose that  absence  of  definite  convictions  gives 
the  mind  freedom  and  agility.  A  man  who 
believes  something  is  ready  and  witty,  because 
he  has  all  his  weapons  about  him.    he  can 

58 


Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 


apply  his  test  in  an  instant.  The  man  engaged 
in  conflict  with  a  man  like  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
may  fancy  he  has  ten  faces;  similarly  a  man 
engaged  against  a  brilliant  duellist  may  fancy 
that  the  sword  of  his  foe  has  turned  to  ten 
swords  in  his  hand.  But  this  is  not  really 
because  the  man  is  playing  with  ten  swords,  it 
is  because  he  is  aiming  very  straight  with  one. 
Moreover,  a  man  with  a  definite  belief  always 
appears  bizarre,  because  he  does  not  change 
with  the  world ;  he  has  climbed  into  a  fixed  star, 
and  the  earth  whizzes  below  him  like  a  zoetrope. 
Millions  of  mild  black-coated  men  call  them- 
selves sane  and  sensible  merely  because  they  y 
always  catch  the  fashionable  insanity,  because 
they  are  hurried  into  madness  after  madness 
by  the  maelstrom  of  the  world. 

People  accuse  Mr.  Shaw  and  many  much 
sillier  persons  of  '^ proving  that  black  is  white." 
But  they  never  ask  whether  the  current  colour- 
language  is  always  correct.  Ordinary  sensible 
phraseology  sometimes  calls  black  white,  it 
certainly  calls  yellow  white  and  green  white 
and  reddish-brown  white.  We  call  wine  "white 
wine"  which  is  as  yellow  as  a  Blue-coat  boy's 
legs.  We  call  grapes  "white  grapes"  which 
are  manifestly  pale  green.  We  give  to  the 
European,  whose  complexion  is  a  sort  of  pink 

59 


Heretics 


drab,  the  horrible  title  of  a  "white  man'^ — a 
picture  more  blood-curdling  than  any  spectre  in 
Poe. 

Now,  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  if  a  man 
asked  a  waiter  in  a  restaurant  for  a  bottle  of 
yellow  wine  and  some  greenish-yellow  grapes, 
the  waiter  w^ould  think  him  mad.  It  is  un- 
doubtedly true  that  if  a  Government  official, 
reporting  on  the  Europeans  in  Burmah,  said, 
"There  are  only  two  thousand  pinkish  men 
here,"  he  would  be  accused  of  cracking  jokes, 
and  kicked  out  of  his  post.  But  it  is  equally 
obvious  that  both  men  would  have  come  to 
grief  through  telling  the  strict  truth.  That  too 
truthful  man  in  the  restaurant;  that  too  truth- 
ful man  in  Burmah,  is  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw.  He 
appears  eccentric  and  grotesque  because  he  will 
not  accept  the  general  belief  that  white  is  yellow. 
He  has  based  all  his  brilliancy  and  solidity  upon 
the  hackneyed,  but  yet  forgotten,  fact  that  truth 
is  stranger  than  fiction.  Truth,  of  course,  must 
of  necessity  be  stranger  than  fiction,  for  we  have 
made  fiction  to  suit  ourselves. 

So  much  then  a  reasonable  appreciation  will 
find  in  Mr.  Shaw  to  be  bracing  and  excellent. 
He  claims  to  see  things  as  they  are;  and  some 
things,  at  any  rate,  he  does  see  as  they  are, 
which  the  whole  of  our  civilization  does  not 

60 


Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 


see  at  all.  But  in  Mr.  Shaw's  realism  there  is 
something  lacking,  and  that  thing  which  is 
lacking  is  serious. 

Mr.  Shaw's  old  and  recognized  philosophy 
was  that  powerfully  presented  in  ^^The  Quin- 
tessence of  Ibsenism."  It  was,  in  brief,  that 
conservative  ideals  were  bad,  not  because  they 
were  conservative,  but  because  they  were  ideals. 
Every  ideal  prevented  men  from  judging  justly 
the  particular  case;  every  moral  generalization 
oppressed  the  individual;  the  golden  rule  was 
there  was  no  golden  rule.  And  the  objection 
to  this  is  simply  that  it  pretends  to  free  men, 
but  really  restrains  them  from  doing  the  only 
thing  that  men  want  to  do.  What  is  the  good 
of  telling  a  community  that  it  has  every  liberty 
except  the  liberty  to  make  laws?  The  liberty 
to  make  laws  is  what  constitutes  a  free  people. 
And  what  is  the  good  of  telling  a  man  (or  a 
philosopher)  that  he  has  every  liberty  except 
the  liberty  to  make  generalizations.  Making 
generalizations  is  what  makes  him  a  man. 
In  short,  when  Mr.  Shaw  forbids  men  to  have 
strict  moral  ideals,  he  is  acting  like  one  who 
should  forbid  them  to  have  children.  The 
saying  that  "the  golden  rule  is  that  there  is  no 
golden  rule,"  can,  indeed,  be  simply  answered 
by  being   turned    round.    That   there    is   no 

6i 


Heretics 


golden  rule  is  itself  a  golden  rule,  or  rather  it 
is  much  worse  than  a  golden  rule.  It  is  an 
iron  rule;  a  fetter  on  the  first  moverftent  of  a 
man. 

But  the  sensation  connected  with  Mr.  Shaw 
in  recent  years  has  been  his  sudden  development 
of  the  religion  of  the  Superman.  He  who  had 
to  all  appearance  mocked  at  the  faiths  in  the 
forgotten  past  discovered  a  new  god  in  the  un- 
imaginable future.  He  who  had  laid  all  the 
blame  on  ideals  set  up  the  most  impossible 
.of  all  ideals,  the  ideal  of  a  new  creature.  But 
the  truth,  nevertheless,  is  that  any  one  who 
knows  Mr.  Shaw's  mind  adequately,  and  ad- 
mires it  properly,  must  have  guessed  all  this 
long  ago. 

For  the  truth  is  that  Mr.  Shaw  has  never 
seen  things  as  they  really  are.  If  he  had  he 
would  have  fallen  on  his  knees  before  them. 
He  has  always  had  a  secret  ideal  that  has 
withered  all  the  things  of  this  world.  He  has 
all  the  time  been  silently  comparing  humanity 
with  something  that  was  not  human,  with  a 
monster  from  Mars,  with  the  Wise  Man  of 
the  Stoics,  with  the  Economic  Man  of  the 
Fabians,  with  Julius  Caesar,  with  Siegfried,  with 
the  Superman.  Now,  to  have  this  inner  and 
merciless  standard  may  be  a  very  good  thing, 

62 


Mr,  Bernard  Shaw 


or  a  very  bad  one,  it  may  be  excellent  or  un- 
fortunate, but  it  is  not  seeing  things  as  they 
are.  It  is  not  seeing  things  as  they  are  to  think 
first  of  a  Briareus  with  a  hundred  hands,  and 
then  call  every  man  a  cripple  for  only  having 
two.  It  is  not  seeing  things  as  they  are  to 
start  with  a  vision  of  Argus  with  his  hundred 
eyes,  and  then  jeer  at  every  man  with  two  eyes 
as  if  he  had  only  one.  And  it  is  not  seeing 
things  as  they  are  to  imagine  a  demi-god  of 
infinite  mental  clarity,  who  may  or  may  not 
appear  in  the  latter  days  of  the  earth,  and  then 
to  see  all  men  as  idiots.  And  this  is  what  Mr. 
Shaw  has  always  in  some  degree  done.  When 
we  really  see  men  as  they  are,  we  do  not  criti-^ 
cise,  but  worship;  and  very  rightly.  For  a 
monster  with  mysterious  eyes  and  miraculous 
thumbs,  with  strange  dreams  in  his  skull,  and  a 
queer  tenderness  for  this  place  or  that  baby,  is 
truly  a  wonderful  and  unnerving  matter.  It 
is  only  the  quite  arbitrary  and  priggish  habit  of 
comparison  with  something  else  which  makes  it 
possible  to  be  at  our  ease  in  front  of  him.  A 
sentiment  of  superiority  keeps  us  cool  and  prac- 
tical; the  mere  facts  would  make  our  knees 
knock  under  as  with  religious  fear.  It  is  the 
fact  that  every  instant  of  conscious  life  is  an 
unimaginable  prodigy.     It  is  the  fact  that  every 

63 


Heretics 


face  in  the  street  has  the  incredible  unexpect- 
edness of  a  fairy-tale.  The  thing  which  pre- 
vents a  man  from  realizing  this  is  not  any 
clear-sightedness  or  experience,  it  is  simply  a 
habit  of  pedantic  and  fastidious  comparisons 
between  one  thing  and  another.  Mr.  Shaw, 
on  the  practical  side  perhaps  the  most  humane 
man  alive,  is  in  this  sense  inhumane.  He  has 
even  been  infected  to  some  extent  with  the 
primary  intellectual  weakness  of  his  new  master, 
Nietzsche,  the  strange  notion  that  the  greater 
and  stronger  a  man  was  the  more  he  would 
despise  other  things.  The  greater  and  stronger 
a  man  is  the  more  he  would  be  inclined  to  pros- 
trate himself  before  a  periwinkle.  That  Mr. 
,  Shaw  keeps  a  lifted  head  and  a  contemptuous 
face  before  the  colossal  panorama  of  empires 
and  civilizations,  this  does  not  in  itself  convince 
one  that  he  sees  things  as  they  are.  I  should 
be  most  effectively  convinced  that  he  did  if  I 
found  him  staring  with  religious  astonishment 
at  his  own  feet.  *^What  are  those  two  beauti- 
ful and  industrious  beings,"  I  can  imagine  him 
murmuring  to  himself,  ^'whom  I  see  every- 
where, serving  me  I  know  not  why?  What 
fairy  godmother  bade  them  come  trotting  out 
of  elfland  when  I  was  born  ?  What  god  of  the 
borderland,  what  barbaric  god  of  legs,  must 

64 


Mr,  Bernard  Shaw 


I  propitiate  with  fire  and  wine,  lest  they  run 
away  with  me?" 

The  truth  is,  that  all  genuine  appreciation 
rests  on  a  certain  mystery  of  humility  and 
almost  of  darkness.  The  man  who  said, 
"Blessed  is  he  that  expecteth  nothing,  for  he 
shall  not  be  disappointed,"  put  the  eulogy 
quite  inadequately  and  even  falsely.  The  truth 
is,  ''Blessed  is  he  that  expecteth  nothing,  for 
he  shall  be  gloriously  surprised."  The  man 
who  expects  nothing  sees  redder  roses  than 
common  men  can  see,  and  greener  grass,  and 
a  more  startling  sun.  Blessed  is  he  that  ex- 
pecteth nothing,  for  he  shall  possess  the  cities 
and  the  mountains;  blessed  is  the  meek,  for 
he  shall  inherit  the  earth.  Until  we  realize  that 
things  might  not  be,  we  cannot  realize  that 
things  are.  Until  we  see  the  background  of 
darkness  we  cannot  admire  the  light  as  a  single 
and  created  thing.  As  soon  as  we  have  seen 
that  darkness,  all  light  is  lightening,  sudden, 
blinding,  and  divine.  Until  we  picture  nonen- 
tity we  underrate  the  victory  of  God,  and  can 
realize  none  of  the  trophies  of  His  ancient 
war.  It  is  one  of  the  million  wild  jests  of  truth 
that  we  know  nothing  until  we  know  nothing. 

Now  this  is,  I  say  deliberately,  the  only  defect 
in  the  greatness  of  Mr.  Shaw,  the  only  answer 

^5 


Heretics 


to  his  claim  to  be  a  great  man,  that  he  is  not 
easily  pleased.  He  is  an  almost  solitary  excep- 
tion to  the  general  and  essential  maxim,  that 
little  things  please  great  minds.  And  from  this 
absence  of  that  most  uproarious  of  all  things, 
humility,  comes  incidentally  the  peculiar  insist- 
ence on  the  Superman.  After  belabouring  a 
great  many  people  for  a  great  many  years  for 
being  unprogressive,  Mr.  Shaw  has  discovered, 
with  characteristic  sense,  that  it  is  very  doubtful 
whether  any  existing  human  being  with  two 
legs  can  be  progressive  at  all.  Having  come  to 
doubt  whether  humanity  can  be  combined  with 
progress,  most  people,  easily  pleased,  would 
have  elected  to  abandon  progress  and  remain 
with  humanity.  Mr.  Shaw,  not  being  easily 
pleased,  decides  to  throw  over  humanity  with 
all  its  limitations  and  go  in  for  progress  for  its 
own  sake.  If  man,  as  we  know  him,  is  inca- 
pable of  the  philosophy  of  progress,  Mr.  Shaw 
asks,  not  for  a  new  kind  of  philosophy,  but  for 
a  new  kind  of  man.  It  is  rather  as  if  a  nurse 
had  tried  a  rather  bitter  food  for  some  years  on 
a  baby,  and  on  discovering  that  it  was  not 
suitable,  should  not  throw  away  the  food  and 
ask  for  a  new  food,  but  throw  the  baby  out  of 
window,  and  ask  for  a  new  baby.  Mr.  Shaw 
cannot   understand   that   the   thing  which   is 

66 


Mr,  Bernard  Shaw 


valuable  and  lovable  in  our  eyes  is  man  —  the 
old  beer-drinking,  creed-making,  fighting,  fail- 
ing, sensual,  respectable  man.  And  the  things 
that  have  been  founded  on  this  creature  im- 
mortally remain;  the  things  that  have  been 
founded  on  the  fancy  of  the  Superman  have 
died  with  the  dying  civilizations  which  alone 
have  given  them  birth.  When  Christ  at  a  sym- 
bolic moment  was  establishing  His  great  society, 
He  chose  for  its  comer-stone  neither  the  bril- 
liant Paul  nor  the  mystic  John,  but  a  shuffler, 
a  snob,  a  coward  —  in  a  word,  a  man.  And 
upon  this  rock  He  has  built  His  Church,  and 
the  gates  of  Hell  have  not  prevailed  against  it. 
All  the  empires  and  the  kingdoms  have  failed, 
because  of  this  inherent  and  continual  weak- 
ness, that  they  were  founded  by  strong  men 
and  upon  strong  men.  But  this  one  thing,  the 
historic  Christian  Church,  was  founded  on  a 
weak  man,  and  for  that  reason  it  is  indestruc- 
tible. For  no  chain  is  stronger  than  its  weakest 
link. 


67 


V  —  Mr,  if.  (t.  Wells  and  the  Giants 

WE  ought  to  see  far  enough  into  a 
hypocrite  to  see  even  his  sincerity. 
We  ought  to  be  interested  in  that 
darkest  and  most  real  part  of  a 
man  in  which  dwell  not  the  vices  that  he  does 
not  display,  but  the  virtues  that  he  cannot. 
And  the  more  we  approach  the  problems  of 
human  history  with  this  keen  and  piercing 
charity,  the  smaller  and  smaller  space  we  shall 
allow  to  pure  hypocrisy  of  any  kind.  The 
hypocrites  shall  not  deceive  us,  into  thinking 
them  saints;  but  neither  shall  they  deceive  us 
into  thinking  them  hypocrites.  And  an  in- 
creasing number  of  cases  will  crowd  into  our 
field  of  inquiry,  cases  in  which  there  is  really 
no  question  of  hypocrisy  at  all,  cases  in  which 
people  were  so  ingenuous  that  they  seemed 
absurd,  and  so  absurd  that  they  seemed  dis- 
ingenuous. 

There  is  one  striking  instance  of  an  unfair 
charge  of  hypocrisy.  It  is  always  urged  against 
the  religious  in  the  past,  as  a  point  of  incon- 
sistency and  duplicity,  that  they  combined  a 
profession   of  almost  crawling  humility   with 

68 


Mr.  H.  G,  Wells  and  the  Giants 

a  keen  struggle  for  earthly  success  and  consider- 
able triumph  in  attaining  it.  It  is  felt  as  a 
piece  of  humbug  that  a  man  should  be  very 
punctilious  in  calling  himself  a  miserable  sinner, 
and  also  very  punctilious  in  calling  himself 
King  of  France.  But  the  truth  is  that  there  is 
no  more  conscious  inconsistency  between  the 
humility  of  a  Christian  and  the  rapacity  of  a 
Christian  than  there  is  between  the  humility  of 
a  lover  and  the  rapacity  of  a  lover.  The  truth 
is  that  there  are  no  things  for  which  men  will 
make  such  herculean  efforts  as  the  things  of 
which  they  know  they  are  unworthy.  There 
never  was  a  man  in  love  who  did  not  declare 
that,  if  he  strained  every  nerve  to  breaking,  he 
was  going  to  have  his  desire.  And  there  never 
was  a  man  in  love  who  did  not  declare  also  that 
he  ought  not  to  have  it.  The  whole  secret  of 
the  practical  success  of  Christendom  lies  in  the 
Christian  humility,  however  imperfectly  ful- 
filled. For  with  the  removal  of  all  question  of 
merit  or  payment,  the  soul  is  suddenly  released 
for  incredible  voyages.  If  we  ask  a  sane  man 
how  much  he  merits,  his  mind  shrinks  in- 
stinctively and  instantaneously.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  he  merits  six  feet  of  earth.  But  if  you 
ask  him  what  he  can  conquer  —  he  can  conquer 
the  stars.    Thus  comes  the  thing  called  Ro- 

69 


Heretics 


mance,  a  purely  Christian  product.  A  man 
cannot  deserve  adventures;  he  cannot  earn 
dragons  and  hippogriffs.  The  mediaeval  Europe 
which  asserted  humility  gained  Romance;  the 
civilization  which  gained  Romance  has  gained 
the  habitable  globe.  How  different  the  Pagan 
and  Stoical  feeling  was  from  this  has  been 
admirably  expressed  in  a  famous  quotation. 
Addison  makes  the  great  Stoic  say  — 

"  'Tis  not  in  mortals  to  command  success ; 
But  we'll  do  more,  Sempronius,  we'll  deserve  it." 

But  the  spirit  of  Romance  and  Christendom, 
the  spirit  which  is  in  every  lover,  the  spirit 
which  has  bestridden  the  earth  with  European 
adventure,  is  quite  opposite.  'Tis  not  in  mor- 
tals to  deserve  success.  But  we'll  do  more, 
Sempronius;  we'll  obtain  it. 

And  this  gay  humility,  this  holding  of  our- 
selves lightly  and  yet  ready  for  an  infinity  of 
unmerited  triumphs,  this  secret  is  so  simple 
that  every  one  has  supposed  that  it  must  be 
something  quite  sinister  and  mysterious.  Hu- 
mility is  so  practical  a  virtue  that  men  think 
it  must  be  a  vice.  Humility  is  so  successful 
that  it  is  mistaken  for  pride.  It  is  mistaken 
for  it  all  the  more  easily  because  it  generally 
goes  with  a  certain  simple  love  of  splendour 
which  amounts  to  vanity.    Humility  will  al- 

70 


Mr.  H,  G.  Wells  and  the  Giants 

ways,  by  preference,  go  clad  in  scarlet  and 
gold;  pride  in  that  which  refuses  to  let  gold 
and  scarlet  impress  it  or  please  it  too  much. 
In  a  word,  the  failure  of  this  virtue  actually 
lies  in  its  success;  it  is  too  successful  as  an 
investment  to  be  believed  in  as  a  virtue.  Hu- 
mility is  not  merely  too  good  for  this  world; 
it  is  too  practical  for  this  world;  I  had  almost 
said  it  is  too  worldly  for  this  world. 

The  instance  most  quoted  in  our  day  is  the 
thing  called  the  humility  of  the  man  of  science; 
and  certainly  it  is  a  good  instance  as  well  as  a 
modern  one.  Men  find  it  extremely  difficult 
to  believe  that  a  man  who  is  obviously  uproot- 
ing mountains  and  dividing  seas,  tearing  down 
temples  and  stretching  out  hands  to  the  stars, 
is  really  a  quiet  old  gentleman  who  only  asks 
to  be  allowed  to  indulge  his  harmless  old  hobby 
and  follow  his  harmless  old  nose.  When  a 
man  splits  a  grain  of  sand  and  the  universe  is 
turned  upside  down  in  consequence,  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  realize  that  to  the  man  who  did  it,  the 
splitting  of  the  grain  is  the  great  affair,  and  the 
capsizing  of  the  cosmos  quite  a  small  one.  It 
is  hard  to  enter  into  the  feelings  of  a  man  who 
regards  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  in  the 
light  of  a  by-product.  But  undoubtedly  it  was 
to  this  almost  eerie  innocence  of  the  intellect 

71 


Heretics 


that  the  great  men  of  the  great  scientific  period, 
which  now  appears  to  be  closing,  owed  their 
enormous  power  and  triumph.  If  they  had 
brought  the  heavens  down  Hke  a  house  of  cards 
their  plea  was  not  even  that  they  had  done  it 
on  principle;  their  quite  unanswerable  plea  was 
that  they  had  done  it  by  accident.  Whenever 
there  was  in  them  the  least  touch  of  pride  in 
what  they  had  done,  there  was  a  good  ground 
for  attacking  them;  but  so  long  as  they  were 
wholly  humble,  they  were  wholly  victorious. 
There  were  possible  answers  to  Huxley;  there 
was  no  answer  possible  to  Darwin.  He  was 
convincing  because  of  his  unconsciousness;  one 
might  almost  say  because  of  his  dulness.  This 
childlike  and  prosaic  mind  is  beginning  to  wane 
in  the  world  of  science.  Men  of  science  are 
beginning  to  see  themselves,  as  the  fine  phrase 
is,  in  the  part;  they  are  beginning  to  be  proud 
of  their  humility.  They  are  beginning  to  be 
aesthetic,  like  the  rest  of  the  world,  beginning 
to  spell  truth  with  a  capital  T,  beginning  to 
talk  of  the  creeds  they  imagine  themselves  to 
have  destroyed,  of  the  discoveries  that  their 
forbears  made.  Like  the  modern  English, 
they  are  beginning  to  be  soft  about  their  own 
*  hardness.  They  are  becoming  conscious  of  their 
own  strength — that  is,  they  are  growing  weaker, 

72 


Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  and  the  Giants 

But  one  purely  modem  man  has  emerged  in 
the  strictly  modem  decades  who  does  carry  into 
our  world  the  clear  personal  simplicity  of  the 
old  world  of  science.  One  man  of  genius  we 
have  who  is  an  artist,  but  who  was  a  man  of 
science,  and  who  seems  to  be  marked  above  all 
things  with  this  great  scientific  humility.  I 
mean  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells.  And  in  his  case,  as 
in  the  others  above  spoken  of,  there  must  be 
a  great  preliminary  difficulty  in  convincing  the 
ordinary  person  that  such  a  virtue  is  predicable 
of  such  a  man.  Mr.  Wells  began  his  literary 
work  with  violent  visions  —  visions  of  the  last 
pangs  of  this  planet;  can  it  be  that  a  man  who 
begins  with  violent  visions  is  humble?  He 
went  on  to  wilder  and  wilder  stories  about  carv- 
ing beasts  into  men  and  shooting  angels  like 
birds.  Is  the  man  who  shoots  angels  and  carves 
beasts  into  men  humble?  Since  then  he  has 
done  something  bolder  than  either  of  these  blas- 
phemies; he  has  prophesied  the  political  future 
of  all  men;  prophesied  it  with  aggressive  author- 
ity and  a  ringing  decision  of  detail.  Is  the 
prophet  of  the  future  of  all  men  humble?  It 
will  indeed  be  difficult,  in  the  present  condition 
of  current  thought  about  such  things  as  pride 
and  humility,  to  answer  the  query  of  how  a 
man  can  be  humble  who  does  such  big  things 

73 


Heretics 


and  such  bold  things.  For  the  only  answer  is 
the  answer  which  I  gave  at  the  beginning  of 
this  essay.  It  is  the  humble  man  who  does  the 
big  things.  It  is  the  humble  man  who  does 
the  bold  things.  It  is  the  humble  man  who  has 
the  sensational  sights  vouchsafed  to  him,  and 
this  for  three  obvious  reasons:  first,  that  he 
strains  his  eyes  more  than  any  other  men  to  see 
them ;  second,  that  he  is  more  overwlielmed  and 
uplifted  with  them  when  they  come;  third,  that 
he  records  them  more  exactly  and  sincerely  and 
with  less  adulteration  from  his  more  common- 
place and  more  conceited  everyday  self.  Ad- 
ventures are  to  those  to  whom  they  are  most 
unexpected  —  that  is,  most  romantic.  Adven- 
tures are  to  the  shy:  in  this  sense  adventures 
are  to  the  unadventurous. 

Now,  this  arresting  mental  humility  in  Mr. 
H.  G.  Wells  may  be,  like  a  great  many  other 
things  that  are  vital  and  vivid,  difficult  to  illus- 
trate by  examples,  but  if  I  were  asked  for  an 
example  of  it,  I  should  have  no  difficulty  about 
which  example  to  begin  with.  The  most  inter- 
esting thing  about  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  is  that  he 
is  the  only  one  of  his  many  brilliant  contem- 
poraries who  has  not  stopped  growing.  One 
can  lie  awake  at  night  and  hear  him  grow. 
Of  this  growth  the  most  evident  manifestation 

74 


Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  and  the  Giants 

is  indeed  a  gradual  change  of  opinions;  but  it 
is  no  mere  change  of  opinions.  It  is  not  a 
perpetual  leaping  from  one  position  to  another 
like  that  of  Mr.  George  Moore.  It  is  a  quite 
continuous  advance  along  a  quite  solid  road 
in  a  quite  definable  direction.  But  the  chief 
proof  that  it  is  not  a  piece  of  fickleness  and 
vanity  is  the  fact  that  it  has  been  upon  the 
whole  in  advance  from  more  startling  opinions 
to  more  humdrum  opinions.  It  has  been  even 
in  some  sense  an  advance  from  unconventional 
opinions  to  conventional  opinions.  This  fact 
'fixes  Mr.  Wells's  honesty  and  proves  him  to  be 
no  poseur.  Mr.  Wells  once  held  that  the  upper 
classes  and  the  lower  classes  would  be  so  much 
differentiated  in  the  future  that  one  class  would 
eat  the  other.  Certainly  no  paradoxical  char- 
latan who  had  once  found  arguments  for  so 
startling  a  view  would  ever  have  deserted  it 
except  for  something  yet  more  startling.  Mr. 
Wells  has  deserted  it  in  favour  of  the  blameless 
belief  that  both  classes  will  be  ultimately  sub- 
ordinated or  assimilated  to  a  sort  of  scientific 
middle  class,  a  class  of  engineers.  He  has 
abandoned  the  sensational  theory  with  the  same 
honourable  gravity  and  simplicity  with  which 
he  adopted  it.  Then  he  thought  it  was  true; 
now  he  thinks  it  is  not  true.     He  has  come  to 

75 


Heretics 


the  most  dreadful  conclusion  a  literary  man  can 
come  to,  the  conclusion  that  the  ordinary  view 
is  the  right  one.  It  is  only  the  last  and  wildest 
kind  of  courage  that  can  stand  on  a  tower  before 
ten  thousand  people  and  tell  them  that  twice 
two  is  four. 

r.  H.  G.  Wells  exists  at  present  in  a  gay 
exhilarating   progress   of   conservativism. 

is  finding  out  more  and  more  that  conven- 
tions, though  silent,  are  alive.  As  good  an 
example  as  any  of  this  humility  and  sanity  of 
his  may  be  found  in  his  change  of  view  on 
the  subject  of  science  and  marriage.  He  once 
held,  I  believe,  the  opinion  which  some  singular 
sociologists  still  hold,  that  human  creatures 
could  successfully  be  paired  and  bred  after  the 
manner  of  dogs  or  horses.  He  no  longer  holds 
that  view.  Not  only  does  he  no  longer  hold 
that  view,  but  he  has  written  about  it  in  '' Man- 
kind in  the  Making"  with  such  smashing  sense 
and  humour,  that  I  find  it  difficult  to  believe 
that  anybody  else  can  hold  it  either.  It  is  true 
that  his  chief  objection  to  the  proposal  is  that  it 
is  physically  impossible,  which  seems  to  me  a 
very  slight  objection,  and  almost  negligible 
compared  with  the  others.  The  one  objection 
to  scientific  marriage  which  is  worthy  of  final 
attention  is  simply  that  such  a  thing  could  only 

76 


Mr.  H,  G,  Wells  and  the  Giants 

be  imposed  on  unthinkable  slaves  and  cowards. 
I  do  not  know  whether  the  scientific  marriage- 
mongers  are  right  (as  they  say)  or  wrong  (as 
Mr.  Wells  says)  in  saying  that  medical  super- 
vision would  produce  strong  and  healthy  men. 
I  am  only  certain  that  if  it  did,  the  first  act  of 
the  strong  and  healthy  men  would  be  to  smash 
the  medical  supervision. 

The  mistake  of  all  that  medical  talk  lies  in 
the  very  fact  that  it  connects  the  idea  of  health 
with  the  idea  of  care.  What  has  health  to  do 
with  care  ?  Health  has  to  do  with  carelessness. 
In  special  and  abnormal  cases  it  is  necessary  to 
have  care.  When  we  are  peculiarly  unhealthy 
it  may  be  necessary  to  be  careful  in  order  to  be 
healthy.  But  even  then  we  are  only  trying  to 
be  healthy  in  order  to  be  careless.  If  we  are 
doctors  we  are  speaking  to  exceptionally  sick 
men,  and  they  ought  to  be  told  to  be  careful. 
But  when  we  are  sociologists  we  are  addressing 
the  normal  man,  we  are  addressing  humanity. 
And  humanity  ought  to  be  told  to  be  reckless- 
ness itself.  For  all  the  fundamental  functions 
of  a  healthy  man  ought  emphatically  to  be  per- 
formed with  pleasure  and  for  pleasure;  they 
emphatically  ought  not  to  be  performed  with 
precaution  or  for  precaution.  A  man  ought  to 
eat  because  he  has  a  good  appetite  to  satisfy, 

77 


Heretics 


and  emphatically  not  because  he  has  a  body  to 
sustain.  A  man  ought  to  take  exercise  not 
because  he  is  too  fat,  but  because  he  loves  foils 
or  horses  or  high  mountains,  and  loves  them 
for  their  own  sake.  And  a  man  ought  to  marry 
because  he  has  fallen  in  love,  and  emphatically 
not  because  the  v^orld  requires  to  be  populated. 
The  food  will  really  renovate  his  tissues  as  long 
as  he  is  not  thinking  about  his  tissues.  The 
exercise  will  really  get  him  into  training  so  long 
as  he  is  thinking  about  something  else.  And 
the  marriage  will  really  stand  some  chance  of 
producing  a  generous-blooded  generation  if  it 
had  its  origin  in  its  own  natural  and  generous 
excitement.  It  is  the  first  law  of  health  that 
our  necessities  should  not  be  accepted  as  neces- 
sities; they  should  be  accepted  as  luxuries. 
Let  us,  then,  be  careful  about  the  small  things, 
such  as  a  scratch  or  a  slight  illness,  or  anything 
that  can  be  managed  with  care.  But  in  the 
name  of  all  sanity,  let  us  be  careless  about 
the  important  things,  such  as  marriage,  o 
the  fountain  of  our  very  life  will  fail. 

Mr.  Wells,  however,  is  not  quite  clear  enough 
of  the  narrower  scientific  outlook  to  see  that 
there  are  some  things  which  actually  ought  not 
to  be  scientific.  He  is  still  slightly  affected 
with  the  great  scientific  fallacy;  I  mean  the 

78 


Mr,  H,  G.  Wells  and  the  Giants 

habit  of  beginning  not  with  the  human  soul, 
which  is  the  first  thing  a  man  learns  about, 
but  with  some  such  thing  as  protoplasm,  which 
is  about  the  last.  The  one  defect  in  his  splendid 
mental  equipment  is  that  he  does  not  sufficiently 
allow  for  the  stuff  or  material  of  men.  In  his 
new  Utopia  he  says,  for  instance,  that  a  chief 
point  of  the  Utopia  will  be  a  disbelief  in  original 
sin.  If  he  had  begun  with  the  human  soul — 
that  is,  if  he  had  begun  on  himself — he  would 
have  found  original  sin  almost  the  first  thing 
to  be  believed  in.  He  would  have  found,  to 
put  the  matter  shortly,  that  a  permanent  pos- 
sibility of  selfishness  arises  from  the  mere  fact 
of  having  a  self,  and  not  from  any  accidents 
of  education  or  ill-treatment.  And  the  weak- 
ness of  all  Utopias  is  this,  that  they  take  the 
greatest  difficulty  of  man  and  assume  it  to  be 
overcome,  and  then  give  an  elaborate  account 
of  the  overcoming  of  the  smaller  ones.  They 
first  assume  that  no  man  will  want  more  than 
his  share,  and  then  are  very  ingenious  in  ex- 
plaining whether  his  share  will  be  delivered  by 
motor-car  or  balloon.  And  an  even  stronger 
example  of  Mr.  Wells's  indifference  to  the  human 
psychology  can  be  found  in  his  cosmopolitan- 
ism, the  abolition  in  his  Utopia  of  all  patriotic 
boundaries.    He  says  in  his  innocent  way  that 

79 


Heretics 


Utopia  must  be  a  world-state,  or  else  people 
might  make  war  on  it.  It  does  not  seem  to 
occur  to  him  that,  for  a  good  many  of  us,  if  it 
were  a  world-state  we  should  still  make  war 
on  it  to  the  end  of  the  world.  For  if  we  admit 
that  there  must  be  varieties  in  art  or  opinion 
what  sense  is  there  in  thinking  there  will  not 
be  varieties  in  government?  The  fact  is  very 
simple.  Unless  you  are  going  deliberately  to 
prevent  a  thing  being  good,  you  cannot  prevent 
it  being  worth  fighting  for.  It  is  impossible  to 
prevent  a  possible  conflict  of  civilizations,  be- 
cause it  is  impossible  to  prevent  a  possible 
conflict  between  ideals.  If  there  were  no 
longer  our  modem  strife  between  nations, 
there  would  only  be  a  strife  between  Utopias. 
For  the  highest  thing  does  not  tend  to  union 
only;  the  highest  thing  tends  also  to  differentia- 
tion. You  can  often  get  men  to  fight  for  the 
union;  but  you  can  never  prevent  them  from 
fighting  also  for  the  differentiation.  This  va- 
riety in  the  highest  thing  is  the  meaning  of  the 
fierce  patriotism,  the  fierce  nationalism  of  the 
great  European  civilization.  It  is  also,  inci- 
dentally, the  meaning  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity. 

But  I  think  the  main  mistake  of  Mr.  Wells's 
philosophy  is  a  somewhat  deeper  one,  one  that 

80 


Mr,  H.  G.  Wells  and  the  Giants 

he  expresses  in  a  very  entertaining  v-     ,n 

the  introductory  part  of  the  new  Utopia.  His 
philosophy  in  some  sense  amounts  to  a  denial 
of  the  possibility  of  philosophy  itself.  At  least, 
he  maintains  that  there  are  no  secure  and  re- 
liable ideas  upon  which  we  can  rest  with  a  final 
mental  satisfaction.  It  will  be  both  clearer, 
however,  and  more  amusing  to  quote  Mr.  Wells 
himself. 

He  says,  ^^  Nothing  endures,  nothing  is  pre- 
cise and  certain  (except  the  mind  of  a  pedant). 
.  .  .  Being  indeed !  —  there  is  no  being,  but  a 
universal  becoming  of  individualities,  and  Plato 
turned  his  back  on  truth  when  he  turned  to- 
wards his  museum  of  specific  ideals."  Mr. 
Wells  says,  again,  *^  There  is  no  abiding  thing 
in  what  we  know.  We  change  from  weaker  to 
stronger  lights,  and  each  more  powerful  light 
pierces  our  hitherto  opaque  foundations  and 
reveals  fresh  and  different  opacities  below." 
Now,  when  Mr.  Wells  says  things  like  this,  I 
speak  with  all  respect  when  I  say  that  he  does 
not  observe  an  evident  mental  distinction.  It 
cannot  be  true  that  there  is  nothing  abiding  in 
what  we  know.  For  if  that  were  so  we  should 
not  know  it  all  and  should  not  call  it  knowledge. 
Our  mental  state  may  be  very  different  from 
that  of  somebody  else  some  thousands  of  years 

8i 


Heretics 


back;  but  it  cannot  be  entirely  different,  or 
else  we  should  not  be  conscious  of  a  difference. 
Mr.  Wells  must  surely  realize  the  first  and  sim- 
plest of  the  paradoxes  that  sit  by  the  springs 
of  truth.  He  must  surely  see  that  the  fact  of 
two  things  being  different  implies  that  they  are 
similar.  The  hare  and  the  tortoise  may  differ 
in  the  quality  of  swiftness,  but  they  must  agree 
in  the  quality  of  motion.  The  swiftest  hare 
cannot  be  swifter  than  an  isosceles  triangle  or 
the  idea  of  pinkness.  When  we  say  the  hare 
moves  faster,  we  say  that  the  tortoise  moves. 
And  when  we  say  of  a  thing  that  it  moves,  we 
say,  without  need  of  other  words,  that  there 
are  things  that  do  not  move.  And  even  in  the 
act  of  saying  that  things  change,  we  say  that 
there  is  something  unchangeable. 

But  certainly  the  best  example  of  Mr.  Wells's 
fallacy  can  be  found  in  the  example  which  he 
himself  chooses.  It  is  quite  true  that  we  see  a 
dim  light  which,  compared  with  a  darker  thing, 
is  light,  but  which,  compared  with  a  stronger 
light,  is  darkness.  But  the  quality  of  light 
remains  the  same  thing,  or  else  we  should  not 
call  it  a  stronger  light  or  recognize  it  as  such. 
If  the  character  of  light  were  not  fixed  in  the 
mind,  we  should  be  quite  as  likely  to  call  a 
denser  shadow  a  stronger  light,  or  vice  versd, 

82 


Mr,  H.  G,  Wells  and  the  Giants 

If  the  character  of  light  became  even  for  an 
instant  unfixed,  if  it  became  even  by  a  hair's- 
breadth  doubtful,  if,  for  example,  there  crept 
into  our  idea  of  light  some  vague  idea  of  blue- 
ness,  then  in  that  flash  we  have  become  doubtful 
whether  the  new  light  has  more  light  or  less. 
In  brief,  the  progress  may  be  as  varying  as  a 
cloud,  but  the  direction  must  be  as  rigid  as  a 
French  road.  North  and  South  are  relative  in 
the  sense  that  I  am  North  of  Bournemouth  and 
South  of  Spitzbergen.  But  if  there  be  any 
doubt  of  the  position  of  the  North  Pole,  there 
is  in  equal  degree  a  doubt  of  whether  I  am 
South  of  Spitzbergen  at  all.  The  absolute  idea 
of  light  may  be  practically  unattainable.  We 
may  not  be  able  to  procure  pure  light.  We  may 
not  be  able  to  get  to  the  North  Pole.  But 
because  the  North  Pole  is  unattainable,  it  does 
not  follow  that  it  is  indefinable.  And  it  is  only 
because  the  North  Pole  is  not  indefinable  that 
we  can  make  a  satisfactory  map  of  Brighton  and 
Worthing. 

In  other  words,  Plato  turned  his  face  to 
truth,  but  his  back  on  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  when 
he  turned  to  his  museum  of  specified  ideals. 
It  is  precisely  here  that  Plato  shows  his  sense. 
It  is  not  true  that  everything  changes;  the 
things  that  change  are  all  the  manifest  and 

83 


Heretics 


material  things.  There  is  something  that  does 
Aioi  change;  and  that  is  precisely  the  abstract 
Equality,  the  invisible  idea.  Mr.  Wells  says 
truly  enough,  that  a  thing  which  we  have  seen 
in  one  connection  as  dark  we  may  see  in  another 
connection  as  light.  But  the  thing  common  to 
both  incidents  is  the  mere  idea  of  light  —  which 
we  have  not  seen  at  all.  Mr.  Wells  might 
grow  taller  and  taller  for  unending  aeons  till 
his  head  was  higher  than  the  loneliest  star. 
I  can  imagine  his  writing  a  good  novel  about 
it.  In  that  case  he  would  see  the  trees  first 
as  tall  things  and  then  as  short  things;  he 
would  see  the  clouds  first  as  high  and  then  as 
low.  But  there  would  remain  with  him  through 
the  ages  in  that  starry  loneliness  the  idea  of 
tallness;  he  would  have  in  the  awful  spaces  for 
companion  and  comfort  the  definite  conception 
that  he  was  growing  taller  and  not  (for  instance) 
growing  fatter. 

And  now  it  comes  to  my  mind  that  Mr. 
H.  G.  Wells  actually  has  written  a  very  delight- 
ful romance  about  men  growing  as  tall  as  trees; 
and  that  here,  again,  he  seems  to  me  to  have 
been  a  victim  of  this  vague  relativism.  "The 
Food  of  the  Gods"  is,  like  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's 
play,  in  essence  a  study  of  the  Superman  idea. 
And  it  lies,  I  think,  even  through  the  veil  of 

84 


Mr.  H,  G.  Wells  and  the  Giants 

a  half-pantomimic  allegory,  open  to  the  same 
intellectual  attack.  We  cannot  be  expected  to 
have  any  regard  for  a  great  creature  if  he  does 
not  in  any  manner  conform  to  our  standards. 
For  unless  he  passes  our  standard  of  greatness 
we  cannot  even  call  him  great.  Nietszche 
summed  up  all  that  is  interesting  in  the  Super- 
man idea  when  he  said,  "Man  is  a  thing  which 
has  to  be  surpassed."  But  the  very  word 
"surpass"  implies  the  existence  of  a  standard 
common  to  us  and  the  thing  surpassing  us. 
If  the  Superman  is  more  manly  than  men  are, 
of  course  they  will  ultimately  deify  him,  even 
if  they  happen  to  kill  him  first.  But  if  he  is 
simply  more  supermanly,  they  may  be  quite 
indifferent  to  him  as  they  would  be  to  another 
seemingly  aimless  monstrosity.  He  must  sub- 
mit to  our  test  even  in  order  to  overawe  us. 
Mere  force  or  size  even  is  a  standard ;  but  that 
alone  will  never  make  men  think  a  man  their 
superior.  Giants,  as  in  the  wise  old  fairy-tales, 
are  vermin.  Supermen,  if  not  good  men,  are 
vermin. 

"The  Food  of  the  Gods"  is  the  tale  of  "Jack 
the  Giant-Killer"  told  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  giant.  This  has  not,  I  think,  been  done 
before  in  literature;  but  I  have  little  doubt  that 
the  psychological  substance  of  it  existed  in  fact. 

85 


Heretics 


I  have  little  doubt  that  the  giant  whom  Jack 
killed  did  regard  himself  as  the  Superman.  It 
is  likely  enough  that  he  considered  Jack  a 
narrow  and  parochial  person  who  wished  to 
frustrate  a  great  forward  movement  of  the  life- 
force.  If  (as  not  unfrequently  was  the  case) 
he  happened  to  have  two  heads,  he  would  point 
out  the  elementary  maxim  which  declares  them 
to  be  better  than  one.  He  would  enlarge  on 
the  subtle  modernity  of  such  an  equipment, 
enabling  a  giant  to  look  at  a  subject  from  two 
points  of  view,  or  to  correct  himself  with 
promptitude.  But  Jack  was  the  champion  of 
the  enduring  human  standards,  of  the  principle 
of  one  man  one  head  and  one  man  one  con- 
science, of  the  single  head  and  the  single  heart 
and  the  single  eye.  Jack  was  quite  unimpressed 
by  the  question  of  whether  the  giant  was  a  par- 
ticularly gigantic  giant.  All  he  wished  to  know 
was  whether  he  was  a  good  giant  —  that  is,  a 
giant  who  was  any  good  to  us.  What  were  the 
giant's  religious  views;  what  his  views  on  politics 
and  the  duties  of  the  citizen?  Was  he  fond  of 
children  —  or  fond  of  them  only  in  a  dark  and 
sinister  sense?  To  use  a  fine  phrase  for  emo- 
tional sanity,  was  his  heart  in  the  right  place? 
Jack  had  sometimes  to  cut  him  up  with  a  sword  i 
in  order  to  find  out. 

86 


Mr.  H,  G,  Wells  and  the  Giants 

The  old  and  correct  story  of  Jack  the  Giant- 
Killer  is  simply  the  whole  story  of  man;  if  it 
were  understood  we  should  need  no  Bibles  or 
histories.  But  the  modern  world  in  particular 
does  not  seem  to  understand  it  at  all.  The 
modern  world,  like  Mr.  Wells,  is  on  the  side 
of  the  giants;  the  safest  place,  and  therefore  the 
meanest  and  the  most  prosaic.  The  modern 
world,  when  it  praises  its  little  Caesars,  talks 
of  being  strong  and  brave :  but  it  does  not  seem 
to  see  the  eternal  paradox  involved  in  the  con- 
junction of  these  ideas.  The  strong  cannot  be 
brave.  Only  the  weak  can  be  brave;  and  yet 
again,  in  practice,  only  those  who  can  be  brave 
can  be  trusted,  in  time  of  doubt,  to  be  strong. 
The  only  way  in  which  a  giant  could  really 
keep  himself  in  training  against  the  inevitable 
Jack  would  be  by  continually  fighting  other 
giants  ten  times  as  big  as  himself.  That  is 
by  ceasing  to  be  a  giant  and  becoming  a  Jack. 
Thus  that  sympathy  with  the  small  or  the 
defeated  as  such,  with  which  we  Liberals  and 
Nationalists  have  been  often  reproached,  is  not 
a  useless  sentimentalism  at  all,  as  Mr.  Wells 
and  his  friends  fancy.  It  is  the  first  law  of 
practical  courage.  To  be  in  the  weakest  camp 
is  to  be  in  the  strongest  school.  Nor  can  I 
imagine  anything  that  would  do  humanity  more 

87 


Heretics 


good  than  the  advent  of  a  race  of  Supermen,  for 
them  to  fight  little  dragons.  If  the  Superman 
is  better  than  we,  of  course  we  need  not  fight 
him;  but  in  that  case,  why  not  call  him  the 
Saint?  But  if  he  is  merely  stronger  (whether 
physically,  mentally,  or  morally  stronger,  I  do 
not  care  a  farthing),  then  he  ought  to  have  to 
reckon  with  us  at  least  for  all  the  strength  we 
have.  It  we  are  weaker  than  he,  that  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  be  weaker  than  ourselves. 
If  we  are  not  tall  enough  to  touch  the  giant's 
knees,  that  is  no  reason  why  we  should  become 
shorter  by  falling  on  our  own.  But  that  is 
at  bottom  the  meaning  of  all  modern  hero- 
worship  and  celebration  of  the  Strong  Man, 
the  Caesar,  the  Superman.  That  he  may  be 
something  more  than  man,  we  must  be  some- 
thing less. 

Doubtless  there  is  an  older  and  better  hero- 
worship  than  this.  But  the  old  hero  was  a 
being  who,  like  Achilles,  was  more  human  than 
humanity  itself.  Nietzsche's  Superman  is  cold 
and  friendless.  Achilles  is  so  foolishly  fond  of 
his  friend  that  he  slaughters  armies  in  the  agony 
of  his  bereavement.  Mr.  Shaw's  sad  Caesar 
says  in  his  desolate  pride,  '*He  who  has  never 
hoped  can  never  despair."  The  Man- God  of 
old  answers  from  his  awful  hill,  "Was  ever 

88 


Mr.  H.  G,  Wells  and  the  Giants 

sorrow  like  unto  my  sorrow?"  A  great  man 
is  not  a  man  so  strong  that  he  feels  less  than 
other  men;  he  is  a  man  so  strong  that  he  feels 
more.  And  when  Nietszche  says,  **  A  new  com- 
mandment I  give  to  you,  'be  hard,'*'  he  is 
really  saying,  "A  new  commandment  I  give  to 
you,  'be  dead."'  SensibDity  is  the  definition*^ 
of  life. 

I  recur  for  a  last  word  to  Jack  the  Giant- 
Killer.  I  have  dwelt  on  this  matter  of  Mr. 
Wells  and  the  giants,  not  because  it  is  specially 
prominent  in  his  mind;  I  know  that  the  Super- 
man does  not  bulk  so  large  in  his  cosmos  as 
in  that  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw.  I  have  dwelt  on 
it  for  the  opposite  reason;  because  this  heresy 
of  immoral  hero-worship  has  taken,  I  think,  a 
slighter  hold  of  him,  and  may  perhaps  still  be 
prevented  from  perverting  one  of  the  best 
thinkers  of  the  day.  In  the  course  of  "The 
New  Utopia'*  Mr.  Wells  makes  more  than  one 
admiring  allusion  to  Mr.  W.  E.  Henley.  That 
clever  and  unhappy  man  lived  in  admiration  of 
a  vague  violence,  and  was  always  going  back  to 
rude  old  tales  and  rude  old  ballads,  to  strong 
and  primitive  literatures,  to  find  the  praise  of 
strength  and  the  justification  of  tryanny.  But 
he  could  not  find  it.  It  is  not  there.  The 
primitive  literature  is  shown  in  the  tale  of  Jack 

89 


Heretics 


the  Giant-Killer.  The  strong  old  literature  is 
all  in  praise  of  the  weak.  The  rude  old  tales 
are  as  tender  to  minorities  as  any  modern 
political  idealist.  The  rude  old  ballads  are  as 
sentimentally  concerned  for  the  under-dog  as 
the  Aborigines  Protection  Society.  When  men 
were  tough  and  raw,  when  they  lived  amid 
hard  knocks  and  hard  laws,  when  they  knew 
what  fighting  really  was,  they  had  only  two 
kinds  of  songs.  The  first  was  a  rejoicing  that 
the  weak  had  conquered  the  strong,  the  second 
a  lamentation  that  the  strong  had,  for  once  in  a 
way,  conquered  the  weak.  For  this  defiance  of 
the  statu  quo,  this  constant  effort  to  alter  the 
existing  balance,  this  premature  challenge  to 
the  powerful,  is  the  whole  nature  and  inmost 
secret  of  the  psychological  adventure  which  is 
called  man.  It  is  his  strength  to  disdain 
strength.  The  forlorn  hope  is  not  only  a  real 
hope,  it  is  the  only  real  hope  of  mankind.  In 
the  coarsest  ballads  of  the  greenwood  men  are 
admired  most  when  they  defy,  not  only  the 
king,  but  what  is  more  to  the  point,  the  hero. 
The  moment  Robin  Hood  becomes  a  sort  of 
Superman,  that  moment  the  chivalrous  chron- 
icler shows  us  Robin  thrashed  by  a  poor  tinker 
whom  he  thought  to  thrust  aside.  And  the 
chivalrous  chronicler  makes  Robin  Hood  re- 

90 


Mr,  H,  G,  Wells  and  the  Giants 

ceive  the  thrashing  in  a  glow  of  admiration. 
This  magnanimity  is  not  a  product  of  modern 
humanitarianism;  it  is  not  a  product  of  any- 
thing to  do  with  peace.  This  magnanimity  is 
merely  one  of  the  lost  arts  of  war.  The  Henley- 
ites  call  for  a  sturdy  and  fighting  England,  and 
they  go  back  to  the  fierce  old  stories  of  the 
sturdy  and  fighting  English.  And  the  thing 
that  they  find  written  across  that  fierce  old 
literature  everywhere,  is  ^*  the  policy  of  Majuba." 


VI  —  Christmas  and  the  ^Esthetes 

THE  world  is  round,  so  round  that  the 
schools  of  optimism  and  pessimism 
have  been  arguing  from  the  begin- 
ning whether  it  is  the  right  way  up. 
The  difficulty  does  not  arise  so  much  from  the 
mere  fact  that  good  and  evil  are  mingled  in 
roughly  equal  proportions;  it  arises  chiefly  from 
the  fact  that  men  always  differ  about  what  parts 
are  good  and  what  evil.  Hence  the  difficulty 
which  besets  '^undenominational  religions." 
They  profess  to  include  what  is  beautiful  in  all 
creeds,  but  they  appear  to  many  to  have  col- 
lected all  that  is  dull  in  them.  All  the  colours 
mixed  together  in  purity  ought  to  make  a  per- 
fect white.  Mixed  together  on  any  human 
paint-box,  they  make  a  thing  like  mud,  and  a 
thing  very  like  many  new  religions.  Such  a 
blend  is  often  something  much  worse  than  any 
one  creed  taken  separately,  even  the  creed  of 
the  Thugs.  The  error  arises  from  the  difficulty 
of  detecting  what  is  really  the  good  part  and 
what  is  really  the  bad  part  of  any  given  religion. 
And  this  pathos  falls  rather  heavily  on  those 
persons  who  have  the  misfortune  to  think  of 

92 


Christmas  and  the  Esthetes 

some  religion  or  other,  that  the  parts  commonly 
counted  good  are  bad,  and  the  parts  commonly 
counted  bad  are  good. 

It  is  tragic  to  admire  and  honestly  admire  a 
human  group,  but  to  admire  it  in  a  photographic 
negative.  It  is  difficult  to  congratulate  all  their 
whites  on  being  black  and  all  their  blacks  on 
their  whiteness.  This  will  often  happen  to  us 
in  connection  with  human  religions.  Take  two 
institutions  which  bear  witness  to  the  religious 
energy  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Take  the 
Salvation  Army  and  the  philosophy  of  Auguste 
Comte. 

The  usual  verdict  of  educated  people  on  the 
Salvation  Army  is  expressed  in  some  such  words 
as  these:  "I  have  no  doubt  they  do  a  great 
deal  of  good,  but  they  do  it  in  a  vulgar  and 
profane  style;  their  aims  are  excellent,  but  their 
methods  are  wrong."  To  me,  unfortunately, 
the  precise  reverse  of  this  appears  to  be  the 
truth.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  aims  of 
the  Salvation  Army  are  excellent,  but  I  am 
quite  sure  their  methods  are  admirable.  Their 
methods  are  the  methods  of  all  intense  and 
hearty  religions;  they  are  popular  like  all  relig- 
ion, military  like  all  religion,  public  and  sen- 
sational like  all  religion.  They  are  not  reverent 
any  more  than  Roman  Catholics  are  reverent, 

93 


Heretics 


for  reverence  in  the  sad  and  delicate  meaning 
of  the  term  reverence  is  a  thing  only  possible 
to  infidels.  That  beautiful  twilight  you  will 
find  in  Euripides,  in  Renan,  in  Matthew  Arnold ; 
but  in  men  who  believe  you  will  not  find  it  — 
you  will  find  only  laughter  and  war.  A  man 
cannot  pay  that  kind  of  reverence  to  truth 
solid  as  marble;  they  can  only  be  reverent 
towards  a  beautiful  lie.  And  the  Salvation 
Army,  though  their  voice  has  broken  out  in 
a  mean  environment  and  an  ugly  shape,  are 
really  the  old  voice  of  glad  and  angry  faith, 
hot  as  the  riots  of  Dionysus,  wild  as  the  gar- 
goyles of  Catholicism,  not  to  be  mistaken  for 
a  philosophy.  Professor  Huxley,  in  one  of  his 
clever  phrases,  called  the  Salvation  Army 
^^corybantic  Christianity."  Huxley  was  the 
last  and  noblest  of  those  Stoics  who  have  never 
understood  the  Cross.  If  he  had  understood 
Christianity  he  would  have  known  that  there 
never  has  been,  and  never  can  be,  any  Chris- 
tianity that  is  not  corybantic. 

And  there  is  this  difference  between  the  mat- 
ter of  aims  and  the  matter  of  methods,  that  to 
judge  of  the  aims  of  a  thing  like  the  Salvation 
Army  is  very  difficult,  to  judge  of  their  ritual 
and  atmosphere  very  easy.  No  one,  perhaps, 
but   a   sociologist   can   see   whether   General 

94 


Christmas  and  the  ^Esthetes 

Booth's  housing  scheme  is  right.  But  any 
healthy  person  can  see  that  banging  brass 
cymbals  together  must  be  right.  A  page  of 
statistics,  a  plan  of  model  dwellings,  anything 
which  is  rational,  is  always  difficult  for  the  lay 
mind.  But  the  thing  which  is  irrational  any 
one  can  understand.  That  is  why  religion  came 
so  early  into  the  world  and  spread  so  far,  while 
science  came  so  late  into  the  world  and  has  not 
spread  at  all.  History  unanimously  attests  the 
fact  that  it  is  only  mysticism  which  stands^ 
the  smallest  chance  of  being  understanded  of  the 
people.  Common  sense  has  to  be  kept  as  an 
esoteric  secret  in  the  dark  temple  of  culture. 
And  so  while  the  philanthropy  of  the  Salva- 
tionists and  its  genuineness  may  be  a  reasonable 
matter  for  the  discussion  of  the  doctors,  there 
can  be  no  doubt  about  the  genuineness  of  their 
brass  bands,  for  a  brass  band  is  purely  spiritual, 
and  seeks  only  to  quicken  the  internal  life. 
The  object  of  philanthropy  is  to  do  good ;  the 
object  of  religion  is  to  be  good,  if  only  for  a 
moment,  amid  a  crash  of  brass. 

And  the  same  antithesis  exists  about  another 
modern  religion  —  I  mean  the  religion  of  Comte, 
generally  known  as  Positivism,  or  the  worship 
of  humanity.  Such  men  as  Mr.  Frederic  Har- 
rison, that  brilliant  and  chivalrous  philosopher, 

95 


Heretics 


who  still,  by  his  mere  personality,  speaks  for  the 
creed,  would  tell  us  that  he  offers  us  the  philos- 
ophy of  Comte,  but  not  all  Comte's  fantastic 
proposals  for  pontiffs  and  ceremonials,  the  new 
calendar,  the  new  holidays  and  saints'  days. 
He  does  not  mean  that  we  should  dress  our- 
selves up  as  priests  of  humanity  or  let  off  fire- 
works because  it  is  Milton's  birthday.  To  the 
solid  English  Comtist  all  this  appears,  he  con- 
fesses, to  be  a  little  absurd.  To  me  it  appears 
the  only  sensible  part  of  Comtism.  As  a 
philosophy  it  is  unsatisfactory.  It  is  evidently 
impossible  to  worship  humanity,  just  as  it  is 
impossible  to  worship  the  Savile  Club;  both 
are  excellent  institutions  to  which  we  may 
happen  to  belong.  But  we  perceive  clearly 
that  the  Savile  Club  did  not  make  the  stars 
and  does  not  fill  the  universe.  And  it  is  surely 
unreasonable  to  attack  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  as  a  piece  of  bewildering  mysticism, 
and  then  to  ask  men  to  worship  a  being  who 
is  ninety  million  persons  in  one  God,  neither  con- 
founding the  persons  nor  dividing  the  substance. 
But  if  the  wisdom  of  Comte  was  insufficient, 
the  folly  of  Comte  was  wisdom.  In  an  age  of 
dusty  modernity,  when  beauty  was  thought  of 
as  something  barbaric  and  ugliness  as  some- 
thing sensible,  he  alone  saw  that  men  must 

96 


Christmas  and  the  Msthetes 

always  have  the  sacredness  of  mummery.  He 
saw  that  while  the  brutes  have  all  the  useful 
things,  the  things  that  are  truly  human  are  the 
useless  ones.  He  saw  the  falsehood  of  that 
almost  universal  notion  of  to-day,  the  notion 
that  rites  and  forms  are  something  artificial, 
additional,  and  corrupt.  Ritual  is  really  much 
older  than  thought;  it  is  much  simpler  and  much 
wilder  than  thought.  A  feeling  touching  the 
nature  of  things  does  not  only  make  men  feel 
that  there  are  certain  proper  things  to  say;  it 
makes  them  feel  that  there  are  certain  proper 
things  to  do.  The  more  agreeable  of  these 
consist  of  dancing,  building  temples,  and  shout- 
ing very  loud;  the  less  agreeable,  of  wearing 
green  carnations  and  burning  other  philosophers 
alive.  But  everywhere  the  religious  dance  came 
before  the  religious  hymn,  and  man  was  a  rit- 
ualist before  he  could  speak.  If  Comtism  had 
spread  the  world  would  have  been  converted, 
not  by  the  Comtist  philosophy,  but  by  the  Com- 
tist  calendar.  By  discouraging  what  they  con- 
ceive to  be  the  weakness  of  their  master,  the 
English  Positivists  have  broken  the  strength  of 
their  religion.  A  man  who  has  faith  must  be 
prepared  not  only  to  be  a  martyr,  but  to  be  a 
fool.  It  is  absurd  to  say  that  a  man  is  ready  to 
toil  and  die  for  his  convictions  when  he  is  not 

97 


Heretics 


even  ready  to  wear  a  wreath  round  his  head  for 
them.  I  myself,  to  take  a  corpus  vile,  am  very 
certain  that  I  would  not  read  the  works  of 
Comte  through  for  any  consideration  whatever. 
But  I  can  easily  imagine  myself  with  the  greatest 
enthusiasm  lighting  a  bonfire  on  Darwin  Day. 

That  splendid  effort  failed,  and  nothing  in 
the  style  of  it  has  succeeded.  There  has  been 
no  rationalist  festival,  no  rationalist  ecstasy. 
Men  are  still  in  black  for  the  death  of  God. 
When  Christianity  was  heavily  bombarded  in 
the  last  century  upon  no  point  was  it  more  per- 
sistently and  brilliantly  attacked  than  upon  that 
of  its  alleged  enmity  to  human  joy.  Shelley 
and  Swinburne  and  all  their  armies  have  passed 
again  and  again  over  the  ground,  but  they  have 
not  altered  it.  They  have  not  set  up  a  single 
new  trophy  or  ensign  for  the  world's  merriment 
to  rally  to.  They  have  not  given  a  name  or  a 
new  occasion  of  gaiety.  Mr.  Swinburne  does 
not  hang  up  his  stocking  on  the  eve  of  the 
birthday  of  Victor  Hugo.  Mr.  William  Archer 
does  not  sing  carols  descriptive  of  the  infancy 
of  Ibsen  outside  people's  doors  in  the  snow. 
In  the  round  of  our  rational  and  mournful  year 
one  festival  remains  out  of  all  those  ancient 
gaieties  that  once  covered  the  whole  earth. 
Christmas  remains  to  remind  us  of  those  ages, 

98 


Christmas  and  the  Esthetes 

whether  Pagan  or  Christian,  when  the  many 
acted  poetry  instead  of  the  few  writing  it.  In 
all  the  winter  in  our  woods  there  is  no  tree  in 
glow  but  the  holly. 

The  strange  truth  about  the  matter  is  told  in 
the  very  word  '^holiday."  A  bank  holiday 
means  presumably  a  day  which  bankers  regard 
as  holy.  A  half-holiday  means,  I  suppose,  a 
day  on  which  a  schoolboy  is  only  partially  holy. 
It  is  hard  to  see  at  first  sight  why  so  human  a 
thing  as  leisure  and  larkiness  should  always 
have  a  religious  origin.  Rationally  there  ap- 
pears no  reason  why  we  should  not  sing  and 
give  each  other  presents  in  honour  of  anything 
—  the  birth  of  Michael  Angelo  or  the  opening 
of  Euston  Station.  But  it  does  not  work.  As 
a  fact,  men  only  become  greedily  and  gloriously 
material  about  something  spiritualistic.  Take 
away  the  Nicene  Creed  and  similar  things,  and 
you  do  some  strange  wrong  to  the  sellers  of 
sausages.  Take  away  the  strange  beauty  of  the 
saints,  and  what  has  remained  to  us  is  the  far 
stranger  ugliness  of  Wandsworth.  Take  away 
the  supernatural,  and  what  remains  is  the  un- 
natural. 

And  now  I  have  to  touch  upon  a  very  sad 
matter.  There  are  in  the  modem  world  an 
admiraole  class  of  persons  who  really  make 

99 


Heretics 


protest  on  behalf  of  that  antiqua  pulchritudo  of 
which  Augustine  spoke,  who  do  long  for  the 
old  feasts  and  formalities  of  the  childhood  of 
the  world.    William  Morris  and  his  followers 
showed  how  much  brighter  were  the  dark  ages 
than  the  age  of  Manchester.    Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats 
frames  his  steps  in  prehistoric  dances,  but  no 
man  knows  and  joins  his  voice  to  forgotten 
choruses  that  no  one  but  he  can  hear.    Mr. 
George  Moore  collects  every  fragment  of  Irish 
paganism  that  the  forgetfulness  of  the  Catholic 
Church  has  left  or  possibly  her  wisdom  pre- 
served.   There  are  innumerable  persons  with 
eye-glasses  and  green  garments  who  pray  for  the 
return  of  the  maypole  or  the  Olympian  games. 
But  there  is  about  these  people  a  haunting  and 
alarming  something  which  suggests  that  it  is 
just  possible  that  they  do  not  keep  Christmas. 
It  is  painful  to  regard  human  nature  in  such  a 
light,  but  it  seems  somehow  possible  that  Mr. 
George  Moore  does  not  wave  his  spoon  and 
shout  when  the  pudding  is  set  alight.    It  is 
even  possible  that  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats  never  pulls 
crackers.    If  so,  where  is  the  sense  of  all  their 
dreams  of  festive  traditions?    Here  is  a  solid 
and  ancient  festive  tradition  still  plying  a  roar- 
ing trade  in  the  streets,  and  they  think  it  vulgar. 
If  this  is  so,  let  them  be  very  certain  of  this, 

lOO 


Christmas  and  the  JEsthetes 

that  they  are  the  kind  of  people  who  in  the 
time  of  the  maypole  would  have  thought  the 
maypole  vulgar;  who  in  the  time  of  the  Can- 
terbury pilgrimage  would  have  thought  the 
Canterbury  pilgrimage  vulgar;  who  in  the  time 
of  the  Olympian  games  would  have  thought 
the  Olympian  games  vulgar.  Nor  can  there  be 
any  reasonable  doubt  that  they  were  vulgar. 
Let  no  man  deceive  himself;  if  by  vulgarity  we 
mean  coarseness  of  speech,  rowdiness  of  be- 
haviour, gossip,  horseplay,  and  some  heavy 
drinking,  vulgarity  there  always  was  wherever 
there  was  joy,  wherever  there  was  faith  in  the 
gods.  Wherever  you  have  belief  you  will  have 
hilarity,  wherever  you  have  hilarity  you  will 
H  have  some  dangers.  And  as  creed  and  mythol- 
ogy produce  this  gross  and  vigorous  life,  so  in 
its  turn  this  gross  and  vigorous  life  will  always 
produce  creed  and  mythology.  If  we  ever  get 
the  English  back  on  to  the  English  land  they 
will  become  again  a  religious  people,  if  all  goes 
well,  a  superstitious  people.  The  absence  from 
modem  life  of  both  the  higher  and  lower  forms 
of  faith  is  largely  due  to  a  divorce  from  nature 
and  the  trees  and  clouds.  If  we  have  no  more 
turnip  ghosts  it  is  chiefly  from  the  lack  of 
turnips. 


lOI 


VII  —  Omar  and  the  Sacred  Vine 

ANEW  morality  has  burst  upon  us 
with  some  violence  in  connection 
with  the  problem  of  strong  drink; 
and  enthusiasts  in  the  matter  range 
from  the  man  who  is  violently  thrown  out  at 
12.30,  to  the  lady  who  smashes  American  bars 
with  an  axe.  In  these  discussions  it  is  almost 
always  felt  that  one  very  wise  and  moderate 
position  is  to  say  that  wine  or  such  stuff  should 
only  be  drunk  as  a  medicine.  With  this  I 
should  venture  to  disagree  with  a  peculiar 
ferocity.  The  one  genuinely  dangerous  and 
immoral  way  of  drinking  wine  is  to  drink  it  as 
a  medicine.  And  for  this  reason.  If  a  man 
drinks  wine  in  order  to  obtain  pleasure,  he  is 
trying  to  obtain  something  exceptional,  some- 
thing he  does  not  expect  every  hour  of  the  day, 
something  which,  unless  he  is  a  little  insane, 
he  will  not  try  to  get  every  hour  of  the  day. 
But  if  a  man  drinks  wine  in  order  to  obtain 
health,  he  is  trying  to  get  something  natural; 
something,  that  is,  that  he  ought  not  to  be 
without;  something  that  he  may  find  it  difficult 
to  reconcile  himself  to   being  without.    The 

102 


Omar  and  the  Sacred  Vine 

man  may  not  be  seduced  who  has  seen  the 
ecstasy  of  being  ecstatic;  it  is  more  dazzling 
to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  ecstasy  of  being  ordi- 
nary. If  there  were  a  magic  ointment,  and  we 
took  it  to  a  strong  man,  and  said,  "This  will 
enable  you  to  jump  off  the  Monument,"  doubt- 
less he  would  jump  off  the  Monument,  but  he 
would  not  jump  off  the  Monument  all  day  long 
to  the  delight  of  the  City.  But  if  we  took  it 
to  a  blind  man,  saying,  "This  will  enable  you 
to  see,'*  he  would  be  under  a  heavier  tempta- 
tion. It  would  be  hard  for  him  not  to  rub  it 
on  his  eyes  whenever  he  heard  the  hoof  of  a 
noble  horse  or  the  birds  singing  at  daybreak. 
It  is  easy  to  deny  one's  self  festivity;  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  deny  one's  self  normality.  Hence 
comes  the  fact  which  every  doctor  knows, 
that  it  is  often  perilous  to  give  alcohol  to  the 
sick  even  when  they  need  it.  I  need  hardly 
say  that  I  do  not  mean  that  I  think  the  giving 
of  alcohol  to  the  sick  for  stimulus  is  neces- 
sarily unjustifiable.  But  I  do  mean  that 
giving  it  to  the  healthy  for  fun  is  the  proper 
use  of  it,  and  a  great  deal  more  consistent  with 
health. 

The  sound  rule  in  the  matter  would  appear 
to  be  like  many  other  sound  rules  —  a  paradox. 
Drink  because  you  are  happy,  but  never  because 

103 


Heretics 


you  are  miserable.  Never  drink  when  you  are 
wretched  without  it,  or  you  will  be  like  the 
grey-faced  gin-drinker  in  the  slum;  but  drink 
when  you  would  be  happy  without  it,  and  you 
will  be  like  the  laughing  peasant  of  Italy. 
Never  drink  because  you  need  it,  for  this  is 
rational  drinking,  and  the  way  to  death  and 
hell.  But  drink  because  you  do  not  need  it, 
for  this  is  irrational  drinking,  and  the  ancient 
health  of  the  world. 

For  more  than  thirty  years  the  shadow  and 
glory  of  a  great  Eastern  figure  has  lain  upon 
our  English  literature.  Fitzgerald's  translation 
of  Omar  Khayyam  concentrated  into  an  im- 
mortal poignancy  all  the  dark  and  drifting 
hedonism  of  our  time.  Of  the  literary  splen- 
dour of  that  work  it  would  be  merely  banal  to 
speak;  in  few  other  of  the  books  of  men  has 
there  been  anything  so  combining  the  gay 
pugnacity  of  an  epigram  with  the  vague  sadness 
of  a  song.  But  of  its  philosophical,  ethical, 
and  religious  influence,  which  has  been  almost 
as  great  as  its  brilliancy,  I  should  like  to  say 
a  word,  and  that  word,  I  confess,  one  of  un- 
compromising hostility.  There  are  a  gref't 
many  things  which  might  be  said  against  the 
spirit  of  the  Rubaiyat,  and  against  its  pro- 
digious influence.    But  one  matter  of  indict- 

104 


Omar  and  the  Sacred  Vine 

ment  towers  ominously  above  the  rest  —  a 
genuine  disgrace  to  it,  a  genuine  calamity  to 
us.  This  is  the  terrible  blow  that  this  great 
poem  has  struck  against  sociability  and  the 
joy  of  life.  Some  one  called  Omar  "the  sad, 
glad  old  Persian."  Sad  he  is;  glad  he  is  not, 
in  any  sense  of  the  word  whatever.  He  has 
been  a  worse  foe  to  gladness  than  the  Puritans. 
A  pensive  and  graceful  Oriental  lies  under 
the  rose-tree  with  his  wine-pot  and  his  scroll  of 
poems.  It  may  seem  strange  that  any  one's 
thoughts  should,  at  the  moment  of  regarding 
him,  fly  back  to  the  dark  bedside  where  the 
doctor  doles  out  brandy.  It  may  seem  stranger 
still  that  they  should  go  back  to  the  grey  wastrel 
shaking  with  gin  in  Houndsditch.  But  a  great 
philosophical  unity  links  the  three  in  an  evil 
bond.  Omar  Khayyam's  wine-bibbing  is  bad, 
not  because  it  is  wine-bibbing.  It  is  bad,  and 
very  bad,  because  it  is  medical  wine-bibbing. 
It  is  the  drinking  of  a  man  who  drinks  because 
he  is  not  happy.  His  is  the  wine  that  shuts 
out  the  universe,  not  the  wine  that  reveals  it. 
It  is  not  poetical  drinking,  which  is  joyous  and 
instinctive;  it  is  rational  drinking,  which  is  as 
prosaic  as  an  investment,  as  unsavoury  as  a 
dose  of  camomile.  Whole  heavens  above  it, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  sentiment,  though 

los 


Heretics 


not  of  style,  rises  the  splendour  of  some  old 
English  drinking-song  — 

"Then  pass  the  bowl,  my  comrades  all, 
And  let  the  zider  vlow." 

For  this  song  was  caught  up  by  happy  men  to 
express  the  worth  of  truly  worthy  things,  of 
brotherhood  and  garrulity,  and  the  brief  and 
kindly  leisure  of  the  poor.  Of  course,  the  great 
part  of  the  more  stolid  reproaches  directed 
against  the  Omarite  morality  are  as  false  and 
babyish  as  such  reproaches  usually  are.  One 
critic,  whose  work  I  have  read,  had  the  in- 
credible foolishness  to  call  Omar  an  atheist 
and  a  materialist.  It  is  almost  impossible  for 
an  Oriental  to  be  either;  the  East  understands 
metaphysics  too  well  for  that.  Of  course,  the 
real  objection  which  a  philosophical  Christian 
would  bring  against  the  religion  of  Omar,  is 
not  that  he  gives  no  place  to  God,  it  is  that 
he  gives  too  much  place  to  God.  His  is  that 
terrible  theism  which  can  imagine  nothing  else 
but  deity,  and  which  denies  altogether  the  out- 
lines of  human  personality  and  human  will. 

"  The  ball  no  question  makes  of  Ayes  or  Noes, 
But  Here  or  There  as  strikes  the  Player  goes; 
And  He  that  tossed  you  down  into  the  field, 
He  knows  about  it  all  —  he  knows  —  he  knows." 

1 06 


Omar  and  the  Sacred  Vine 

A  Christian  thinker,  such  as  Augustine  or 
Dante,  would  object  to  this  because  it  ignores 
free-will,  which  is  the  valour  and  dignity  of  the 
soul.  The  quarrel  of  the  highest  Christianity 
with  this  scepticism  is  not  in  the  least  that  the 
scepticism  denies  the  existence  of  God;  it  is 
that  it  denies  the  existence  of  man. 

In  this  cult  of  the  pessimistic  pleasure-seeker 
the  Rubaiyat  stands  first  in  our  time;  but  it 
does  not  stand  alone.  Many  of  the  most  bril- 
liant intellects  of  our  time  have  urged  us  to  the 
same  self-conscious  snatching  at  a  rare  delight. 
Walter  Pater  said  that  we  were  all  under  sen- 
tence of  death,  and  the  only  course  was  to 
enjoy  exquisite  moments  simply  for  those  mo- 
ments' sake.  The  same  lesson  was  taught  by 
the  very  powerful  and  very  desolate  philosophy 
of  Oscar  Wilde.  It  is  the  carpe  diem  religion; 
but  the  carpe  diem  religion  is  not  the  religion 
of  happy  people,  but  of  very  unhappy  people. 
Great  joy  does  not  gather  the  rosebuds  while 
it  may;  its  eyes  are  fixed  on  the  immortal  rose 
which  Dante  saw.  Great  joy  has  in  it  the 
sense  of  immortality;  the  very  splendour  of 
youth  is  the  sense  that  it  has  all  space  to  stretch 
its  legs  in.  In  all  great  comic  literature,  in 
''Tristram  Shandy"  or  "Pickwick,"  there  is 
this  sense  of  space  and  incorruptibility;  we  feel 

107 


Heretics 


the  characters  are  deathless  people  in  an  endless 
tale. 

It  is  true  enough,  of  course,  that  a  pungent 
happiness  comes  chiefly  in  certain  passing 
moments;  but  it  is  not  true  that  we  should 
think  of  them  as  passing,  or  enjoy  them  simply 
''for  those  moments'  sake."  To  do  this  is  to 
rationalize  the  happiness,  and  therefore  to  de- 
stroy it.     Happiness  is  a  mystery  like  religion, 

V  and  should  never  be  rationalized.  Suppose  a 
man  experiences  a  really  splendid  moment  of 
pleasure.  I  do  not  mean  something  connected 
with  a  bit  of  enamel,  I  mean  something  with 
a  violent  happiness  in  it  —  an  almost  painful 
happiness.  A  man  may  have,  for  instance,  a 
moment  of  ecstasy  in  first  love,  or  a  moment  of 
victory  in  battle.  The  lover  enjoys  the  mo- 
ment, but  precisely  not  for  the  moment's  sake. 
He  enjoys  it  for  the  woman's  sake,  or  his  own 
sake.  The  warrior  enjoys  the  moment,  but  not 
for  the  sake  of  the  moment ;  he  enjoys  it  for  the 
sake  of  the  flag.  The  cause  which  the  flag 
stands  for  may  be  foolish  and  fleeting;  the  love 
may  be  calf-love,  and  last  a  week.  But  the 
patriot  thinks  of  the  flag  as  eternal;  the  lover 
thinks  of  his  love  as  something  that  cannot  end. 

^  These  moments  are  filled  with  eternity;  these 
moments  are  joyful  because  they  do  not  seem 

io8 


Omar  and  the  Sacred  Vine 

momentary.  Once  look  at  them  as  moments 
after  Pater's  manner,  and  they  become  as  cold 
as  Pater  and  his  style.  Man  cannot  love 
mortal  things.  He  can  only  love  immortal 
things  for  an  instant. 

Pater's  mistake  is  revealed  in  his  most  famous 
phrase.  He  asks  us  to  bum  with  a  hard,  gem- 
like flame.  Flames  are  never  hard  and  never 
gem-like  —  they  cannot  be  handled  or  arranged. 
So  human  emotions  are  never  hard  and  never 
gem-like ;  they  are  always  dangerous,  like  flames, 
to  touch  or  even  to  examine.  There  is  only 
one  way  in  which  our  passions  can  become 
hard  and  gem-like,  and  that  is  by  becoming  as 
cold  as  gems.  No  blow  then  has  ever  been 
struck  at  the  natural  loves  and  laughter  of  men 
so  sterilizing  as  this  carpe  diem  of  the  aesthetes. 
For  any  kind  of  pleasure  a  totally  different 
spirit  is  required;  a  certain  shyness,  a  certain 
indeterminate  hope,  a  certain  boyish  expecta- 
tion. Purity  and  simplicity  are  essential  to 
passions  —  yes,  even  to  evil  passions.  Even 
vice  demands  a  sort  of  virginity. 

Omar's  (or  Fitzgerald^ s)  effect  upon  the  other 
world  we  may  let  go,  his  hand  upon  this  world 
has  been  heavy  and  paralyzing.  The  Puritans, 
as  I  have  said,  are  far  jollier  than  he.  The 
new  ascetics  who  follow  Thoreau  or  Tolstoy 

109 


Heretics 


are  much  livelier  company;  for,  though  the 
surrender  of  strong  drink  and  such  luxuries 
may  strike  us  as  an  idle  negation,  it  may  leave 
a  man  with  innumerable  natural  pleasures,  and, 
above  all,  with  man's  natural  power  of  happi- 
ness. Thoreau  could  enjoy  the  sunrise  without 
a  cup  of  coffee.  If  Tolstoy  cannot  admire 
marriage,  at  least  he  is  healthy  enough  to 
admire  mud.  Nature  can  be  enjoyed  without 
even  the  most  natural  luxuries.  A  good  bush 
needs  no  wine.  But  neither  nature  nor  wine 
nor  anything  else  can  be  enjoyed  if  we  have  the 
wrong  attitude  towards  happiness,  and  Omar 
(or  Fitzgerald)  did  have  the  wrong  attitude 
towards  happiness.  He  and  those  he  has  in- 
fluenced do  not  see  that  if  we  are  to  be  truly  gay, 
we  must  believe  that  there  is  some  eternal  gaiety 
in  the  nature  of  things.  We  cannot  enjoy 
thoroughly  even  a  pas-de-quatre  at  a  subscrip- 
tion dance  unless  we  believe  that  the  stars  are 
dancing  to  the  same  tune,'  No  one  can  be  really 
hilarious  but  the  serious  man.  "Wine,''  says 
the  Scripture,  "maketh  glad  the  heart  of  man," 
but  only  of  the  man  who  has  a  heart.  The 
thing  called  high  spirits  is  possible  only  to  the 
spiritual.  Ultimately  a  man  cannot  rejoice  in 
anything  except  the  nature  of  things.  Ulti- 
4  mately  a  man  can  enjoy  nothing  except  religion. 

no 


Omar  and  the  Sacred  Vine 

Once  in  the  world's  history  men  did  believe 
that  the  stars  were  dancing  to  the  tune  of  their 
temples,  and  they  danced  as  men  have  never 
danced  since.  With  this  old  pagan  eudae- 
monism  the  sage  of  the  Rubaiyat  has  quite  as 
little  to  do  as  he  has  with  any  Christian  variety. 
He  is  no  more  a  Bacchanal  than  he  is  a  saint. 
Dionysus  and  his  church  was  grounded  on  a 
serious  joie-de-vivre  like  that  of  Walt  Whitman. 
Dionysus  made  wine,  not  a  medicine,  but  a 
sacrament.  Jesus  Christ  also  made  wine,  not 
■a  medicine,  but  a  sacrament.  But  Omar  makes 
iit,  not  a  sacrament,  but  a  medicine.  He  feasts 
'because  life  is  not  joyful;  he  revels  because  he 
is  not  glad.  "Drink,"  he  says,  "for  you  know 
not  whence  you  come  nor  why.  Drink,  for 
you  know  not  when  you  go  nor  where.  Drink, 
because  the  stars  are  cruel  and  the  world  as  idle 
as  a  humming-top.  Drink,  because  there  is 
nothing  worth  trusting,  nothing  worth  fighting 
for.  Drink,  because  all  things  are  lapsed  in  a 
base  equality  and  an  evil  peace."  So  he  stands 
offering  us  the  cup  in  his  hand.  And  at  the 
high  altar  of  Christianity  stands  another  figure, 
in  whose  hand  also  is  the  cup  of  the  vine. 
"Drink,"  he  says,  "for  the  whole  world  is  as 
red  as  this  wine,  with  the  crimson  of  the  love 
and  wrath  of  God.    Drink,  for  the  trumpets 

III 


Heretics 


are  blowing  for  battle  and  this  is  the  stirrup- 
cup.  Drink,  for  this  my  blood  of  the  new 
testament  that  is  shed  for  you.  Drink,  for  I 
know  of  whence  you  come  and  why.  Drink, 
for  I  know  of  when  you  go  and  where." 


113 


VIII  —  The  Mildness  of  the   Yellow  Press 

THERE  is  a  great  deal  of  protest 
made  from  one  quarter  or  another 
nowadays  against  the  influence  of 
that  new  journalism  which  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  names  of  Sir  Alfred  Harmsworth 
and  Mr.  Pearson.  But  almost  everybody  who 
attacks  it  attacks  on  the  ground  that  it  is  very 
sensational,  very  violent  and  vulgar  and  start- 
ling. I  am  speaking  in  no  affected  contrariety, 
but  in  the  simplicity  of  a  genuine  personal  im- 
pression, when  I  say  that  this  journalism  offends 
as  being  not  sensational  or  violent  enough. 
The  real  vice  is  not  that  it  is  startling,  but  that 
it  is  quite  insupportably  tame.  The  whole 
object  is  to  keep  carefully  along  a  certain  level 
of  the  expected  and  the  commonplace;  it  may 
be  low,  but  it  must  take  care  also  to  be  fiat. 
Never  by  any  chance  in  it  is  there  any  of  that 
real  plebeian  pungency  which  can  be  heard 
from  the  ordinary  cabman  in  the  ordinary 
street.  We  have  heard  of  a  certain  standard 
of  decorum  which  demands  that  things  should 
be  funny  without  being  vulgar,  but  the  standard 
of  this  decorum  demands  that  if  things  are 
vulgar  they  shall  be  vulgar  without  being  funny. 

"3 


Heretics 


This  journalism  does  not  merely  fail  to  exag- 
gerate life  —  it  positively  underrates  it ;  and  it 
has  to  do  so  because  it  is  intended  for  the 
faint  and  languid  recreation  of  men  whom  the 
fierceness  of  modern  life  has  fatigued.  This 
press  is  not  the  yellow  press  at  all;  it  is  the 
drab  press.  Sir  Alfred  Harmsworth  must  not 
address  to  the  tired  clerk  any  observation  more 
witty  than  the  tired  clerk  might  be  able  to 
address  to  Sir  Alfred  Harmsworth.  It  must 
not  expose  anybody  (anybody  who  is  powerful, 
that  is),  it  must  not  offend  anybody,  it  must 
not  even  please  anybody,  too  much.  A  general 
vague  idea  that  in  spite  of  all  this,  our  yellow 
press  is  sensational,  arises  from  such  external 
accidents  as  large  type  or  lurid  headlines.  It 
is  quite  true  that  these  editors  print  everything 
they  possibly  can  in  large  capital  letters.  But 
they  do  this,  not  because  it  is  startling,  but 
because  it  is  soothing.  To  people  wholly 
weary  or  partly  drunk  in  a  dimly  lighted  train, 
it  is  a  simplification  and  a  comfort  to  have 
things  presented  in  this  vast  and  obvious  man- 
ner. The  editors  use  this  gigantic  alphabet  in 
dealing  with  their  readers,  for  exactly  the  same 
reason  that  parents  and  governesses  use  a  simi- 
lar gigantic  alphabet  in  teaching  children  to 
spell.    The  nursery  authorities  do  not  use  an 

114 


The  Mildness  of  the  Yellow  Press 

A  as  big  as  a  horseshoe  in  order  to  make  the 
child  jump;  on  the  contrary,  they  use  it  to  put 
the  child  at  his  ease,  to  make  things  smoother 
and  more  evident.  Of  the  same  character  is 
the  dim  and  quiet  dame  school  which  Sir  Alfred 
Harmsworth  and  Mr.  Pearson  keep.  All  their 
sentiments  are  spelling-book  sentiments  —  that 
is  to  say,  they  are  sentiments  with  which  the 
pupil  is  already  respectfully  familiar.  All 
their  wildest  posters  are  leaves  torn  from  a 
copy-book. 

Of  real  sensational  journalism,  as  it  exists  in 
France,  in  Ireland,  and  in  America,  we  have  no 
trace  in  this  country.  When  a  journalist  in 
Ireland  wishes  to  create  a  thrill,  he  creates  a 
thrill  worth  talking  about.  He  denounces 
a  leading  Irish  member  for  corruption,  or  he 
charges  the  whole  police  system  with  a  wicked 
and  definite  conspiracy.  When  a  French  jour- 
nalist desires  a  frisson  there  is  a  frisson;  he 
discovers,  let  us  say,  that  the  President  of  the 
Republic  has  murdered  three  wives.  Our  yel- 
low journalists  invent  quite  as  unscrupulously 
as  this;  their  moral  condition  is,  as  regards 
careful  veracity,  about  the  same.  But  it  is 
their  mental  calibre  which  happens  to  be  such 
that  they  can  only  invent  calm  and  even  reas- 
suring things.    The  fictitious  version  of  the  mas- 

115 


Heretics 


i 


sacre  of  the  envoys  of  Pekin  was  mendacious, 
but  it  was  not  interesting,  except  to  those  who 
had  private  reasons  for  terror  or  sorrow.  It 
was  not  connected  with  any  bold  and  suggestive 
view  of  the  Chinese  situation.  It  revealed  only 
a  vague  idea  that  nothing  could  be  impressive 
except  a  great  deal  of  blood.  Real  sensation- 
alism, of  which  I  happen  to  be  very  fond,  may 
be  either  moral  or  immoral.  But  even  when  it 
is  most  immoral,  it  requires  moral  courage. 
For  it  is  one  of  the  most  dangerous  things  on 
earth  genuinely  to  surprise  anybody.  If  you 
make  any  sentient  creature  jump,  you  render  it 
by  no  means  improbable  that  it  will  jump  on 
you.  But  the  leaders  of  this  movement  have  no 
moral  courage  or  immoral  courage;  their  whole 
method  consists  in  saying,  with  large  and  elabo- 
rate emphasis,  the  things  which  everybody  else 
says  casually,  and  without  remembering  what 
they  have  said.  When  they  brace  themselves 
up  to  attack  anything,  they  never  reach  the 
point  of  attacking  anything  which  is  large  and 
real,  and  would  resound  with  the  shock.  They 
do  not  attack  the  army  as  men  do  in  France, 
or  the  judges  as  men  do  in  Ireland,  or  the 
democracy  itself  as  men  did  in  England  a 
hundred  years  ago.  They  attack  something 
like  the  War  Office  —  something,  that  is,  which 

ii6 


The  Mildness  of  the  Yellow  Press 

everybody  attacks  and  nobody  bothers  to  de- 
fend, something  which  is  an  old  joke  in  fourth- 
rate  comic  papers.  Just  as  a  man  shows  he 
has  a  weak  voice  by  straining  it  to  shout,  so 
they  show  the  hopelessly  unsensational  nature 
of  their  minds  when  they  really  try  to  be  sen- 
sational. With  the  whole  world  full  of  big  and 
dubious  institutions,  with  the  whole  wickedness 
of  civilization  staring  them  in  the  face,  their 
idea  of  being  bold  and  bright  is  to  attack  the 
War  Ofi&ce.  They  might  as  well  start  a  cam- 
paign against  the  weather,  or  form  a  secret 
society  in  order  to  make  jokes  about  mothers- 
in-law.  Nor  is  it  only  from  the  point  of  view 
of  particular  amateurs  of  the  sensational  such 
as  myself,  that  it  is  permissible  to  say,  in  the 
words  of  Cowper^s  Alexander  Selkirk,  that 
"their  tameness  is  shocking  to  me."  The 
whole  modern  world  is  pining  for  a  genuinely 
sensational  journalism.  This  has  been  dis- 
covered by  that  very  able  and  honest  journalist, 
Mr.  Blatchford,  who  started  his  campaign 
against  Christianity,  warned  on  all  sides,  I 
believe,  that  it  would  ruin  his  paper,  but  who 
continued  from  an  honourable  sense  of  intellec- 
tual responsibility.  He  discovered,  however, 
that  while  he  had  undoubtedly  shocked  his 
readers,  he  had  also  greatly  advanced  his  news- 

117 


Heretics 


paper.  It  was  bought  —  first,  by  all  the  people 
who  agreed  with  him  and  wanted  to  read  it ;  and 
secondly,  by  all  the  people  who  disagreed  with 
him,  and  wanted  to  write  him  letters.  Those 
letters  were  voluminous  (I  helped,  I  am  glad  to 
say,  to  swell  their  volume),  and  they  were  gen- 
erally inserted  with  a  generous  fulness.  Thus 
was  accidentally  discovered  (like  the  steam- 
engine)  the  great  journalistic  maxim  —  that  if 
an  editor  can  only  make  people  angry  enough, 
they  will  write  half  his  newspaper  for  him  for 
nothing. 

Some  hold  that  such  papers  as  these  are 
scarcely  the  proper  objects  of  so  serious  a  con- 
sideration; but  that  can  scarcely  be  maintained 
from  a  political  or  ethical  point  of  view.  In 
this  problem  of  the  mildness  and  tameness  of 
the  Harmsworth  mind  there  is  mirrored  the 
outlines  of  a  much  larger  problem  which  is  akin 
to  it. 

The  Harmsworthian  journalist  begins  with  a 
worship  of  success  and  violence,  and  ends  in 
sheer  timidity  and  mediocrity.  But  he  is  not 
alone  in  this,  nor  does  he  come  by  this  fate 
merely  because  he  happens  personally  to  be 
stupid.  Every  man,  however  brave,  who  be- 
gins by  worshipping  violence,  must  end  in  mere 
timidity.    Every  man,  however  wise,  who  be- 

ii8 


The  Mildness  of  the  Yellow  Press 

ginsjDxworsJiipping  success,  must  end  in  mere 
mediocrity.  This  strange  and  paradoxical  fate 
is  involved,  not  in  the  individual,  but  in  the 
philosophy,  in  the  point  of  view.  .  It  is  not  the 
folly  of  the  man  which  brings  about  this  neces- 
sary fall;  it  is  his  wisdom.  The  worship  of 
success  is  the  only  one  out  of  all  possible  wor- 
ships of  which  this  is  true,  that  its  followers  are 
foredoomed  to  become  slaves  and  cowards.  A 
man  may  be  a  hero  for  the  sake  of  Mrs.  Gallup's 
ciphers  or  for  the  sake  of  human  sacrifice,  but 
not  for  the  sake  of  success.  For  obviously  a 
man  may  choose  to  fail  because  he  loves  Mrs. 
Gallup  or  human  sacrifice;  but  he  cannot  choose 
to  fail  because  he  loves  success.  When  the  test 
of  triumph  is  men's  test  of  everything,  they 
never  endure  long  enough  to  triumph  at  all. 
As  long  as  matters  are  really  hopeful,  hope  is 
a  mere  flattery  or  platitude;  it  is  only  when 
everything  is  hopeless  that  hope  begins  to  be  a 
strength  at  all.  Like  all  the  Christian  virtues, 
it  is  as  unreasonable  as  it  is  indispensable. 

It  was  through  this  fatal  paradox  in  the 
nature  of  things  that  all  these  modern  adven- 
turers come  at  last  to  a  sort  of  tedium  and 
acquiescence.  They  desired  strength;  and  to 
them  to  desire  strength  was  to  admire  strength; 
to  admire  strength  was  simply  to  admire  the 

119 


Heretics 


statu  quo.  They  thought  that  he  who  wished 
to  be  strong  ought  to  respect  the  strong.  They 
did  not  reaHze  the  obvious  verity  that  he  who 
wishes  to  be  strong  must  despise  the  strong. 
They  sought  to  be  everything,  to  have  the 
whole  force  of  the  cosmos  behind  them,  to  have 
an  energy  that  would  drive  the  stars.  But  they 
did  not  realize  the  two  great  facts  —  first,  that 
in  the  attempt  to  be  everything  the  first  and 
most  difficult  step  is  to  be  something;  second, 
that  the  moment  a  man  is  something,  he  is 
essentially  defying  everything.  The  lower  ani- 
mals, say  the  men  of  science,  fought  their  way 
up  with  a  blind  selfishness.  If  this  be  so,  the 
only  real  moral  of  it  is  that  our  unselfishness, 
if  it  is  to  triumph,  must  be  equally  blind.  The 
mammoth  did  not  put  his  head  on  one  side  and 
wonder  whether  mammoths  were  a  little  out  of 
date.  Mammoths  were  at  least  as  much  up  to 
date  as  that  individual  mammoth  could  make 
them.  The  greal  elk  did  not  say,  "Cloven  hoofs 
are  very  much  worn  now."  He  polished  his 
own  weapons  for  his  own  use.  But  in  the 
reasoning  animal  there  has  arisen  a  more 
horrible  danger,  that  he  may  fail  through  per- 
ceiving his  own  failure.  When  modern  sociol- 
ogists talk  of  the  necessity  of  accommodating 
one's  self  to  the  trend  of  the  time,  they  forget 

lao 


The  Mildness  of  the  Yellow  Press 

that  the  trend  of  the  time  at  its  best  consists 
entirely  of  people  who  will  not  accommodate 
themselves  to  anything.  At  its  worst  it  consists 
of  many  millions  of  frightened  creatures  all 
accommodating  themselves  to  a  trend  that  is 
not  there.  And  that  is  becoming  more  and 
more  the  situation  of  modern  England.  Every 
man  speaks  of  public  opinion,  and  means  by 
public  opinion,  public  opinion  minus  his  opin- 
ion. Every  man  makes  his  contribution  nega- 
tive under  the  erroneous  impression  that  the 
next  man^s  contribution  is  positive.  Every  man 
surrenders  his  fancy  to  a  general  tone  which  is 
itself  a  surrender.  And  over  all  the  heartless 
and  fatuous  unity  spreads  this  new  and  weari- 
some and  platitudinous  press,  incapable  of 
invention,  incapable  of  audacity,  capable  only 
of  a  servility  all  the  more  contemptible  because 
it  is  not  even  a  servility  to  the  strong.  But  all 
who  begin  with  force  and  conquest  will  end  in 
this. 

The  chief  characteristic  of  the  '^New  Jour- 
nalism" is  "simply  that  it  is  bad  journalism.  It 
is  beyond  all  comparison  the  most  shapeless, 
careless,  and  colourless  work  done  in  our  day. 

I  read  yesterday  a  sentence  which  should  be 
written  in  letters  of  gold  and  adamant;  it  is  the 
very  motto  of  the  new  philosophy  of  Empire. 

121 


Heretics 


I  found  it  (as  the  reader  has  already  eagerly 
guessed)  in  Pearson's  Magazine,  while  I  was 
communing  (soul  to  soul)  with  Mr.  C.  Arthur 
Pearson,  whose  first  and  suppressed  name  I  am 
afraid  is  Chilperic.  It  occurred  in  an  article 
on  the  American  Presidential  Election.  This 
is  the  sentence,  and  every  one  should  read  it 
carefully,  and  roll  it  on  the  tongue,  till  all  the 
honey  be  tasted. 

"A  little  sound  common  sense  often  goes 
further  with  an  audience  of  American  working- 
men  than  much  high-flown  argument.  A 
speaker  who,  as  he  brought  forward  his  points, 
hammered  nails  into  a  board,  won  hundreds 
of  votes  for  his  side  at  the  last  Presidential 
Election." 

I  do  not  wish  to  soil  this  perfect  thing  with 
comment;  the  words  of  Mercury  are  harsh  after 
the  songs  of  Apollo.  But  just  think  for  a 
moment  of  the  mind,  the  strange  inscrutable 
mind,  of  the  man  who  wrote  that,  of  the  editor 
who  approved  it,  of  the  people  who  are  prob- 
ably impressed  by  it,  of  the  incredible  American 
working-man,  of  whom,  for  all  I  know,  it  may 
be  true.  Think  what  their  notion  of  "common 
sense"  must  be!  It  is  delightful  to  realize  that 
you  and  I  are  now  able  to  win  thousands  of 
votes  should  we  ever  be  engaged  in  a  Presiden- 

123 


The  Mildness  of  the  Yellow  Press 

tial  Election,  by  doing  something  of  this  kind. 
For  I  suppose  the  nails  and  the  board  are  not 
essential  to  the  exhibition  of  "common  sense;'' 
there  may  be  variations.     We  may  read  — 

"A  little  common  sense  impresses  American 
working-men  more  than  high-flown  argument. 
A  speaker  who,  as  he  made  his  points,  pulled 
buttons  off  his  waistcoat,  won  thousands  of 
votes  for  his  side."  Or,  **  Sound  common 
sense  tells  better  in  America  than  high-flown 
argument.  Thus  Senator  Budge,  who  threw 
his  false  teeth  in  the  air  every  time  he  made  an 
epigram,  won  the  solid  approval  of  American 
working-men."  Or  again,  **The  sound  com- 
mon sense  of  a  gentleman  from  Earlswood, 
who  stuck  straws  in  his  hair  during  the  pro- 
gress of  his  speech,  assured  the  victory  of  Mr. 
Roosevelt." 

There  are  many  other  elements  in  this  article 
on  which  I  should  love  to  linger.  But  the 
matter  which  I  wish  to  point  out  is  that  in  that 
sentence  is  perfectly  revealed  the  whole  truth 
of  what  our  Chamberlainites,  hustlers,  bustlers. 
Empire-builders,  and  strong,  silent  men,  really 
mean  by  "common  sense."  They  mean  knock- 
ing, with  deafening  noise  and  dramatic  effect, 
meaningless  bits  of  iron  into  a  useless  bit  of 
wood. 

123 


Heretics 


A  man  goes  on  to  an  American  platform  and 
behaves  like  a  mountebank  fool  with  a  board 
and  a  hammer;  well,  I  do  not  blame  him;  I 
might  even  admire  him.  He  may  be  a  dashing 
and  quite  decent  strategist.  He  may  be  a  fine 
romantic  actor,  like  Burke  flinging  the  dagger 
on  the  floor.  He  may  even  (for  all  I  know) 
be  a  sublime  mystic,  profoundly  impressed  with 
the  ancient  meaning  of  the  divine  trade  of  the 
Carpenter,  and  offering  to  the  people  a  parable 
in  the  form  of  a  ceremony.  All  I  wish  to 
indicate  is  the  abyss  of  mental  confusion  in 
which  such  wild  ritualism  can  be  called  "sound 
common  sense."  And  it  is  in  that  abyss  of 
mental  confusion,  and  in  that  alone,  that  the 
new  Imperialism  lives  and  moves  and  has  its 
•  being.  The  whole  glory  and  greatness  of  Mr. 
Chamberlain  consists  in  this:  that  if  a  man  hits 
the  right  nail  on  the  head  nobody  cares  where 
he  hits  it  to  or  what  it  does.  They  care  about 
the  noise  of  the  hammer,  not  about  the  silent 
grip  of  the  nail.  Before  and  throughout  the 
African  war,  Mr.  Chamberlain  was  always 
knocking  in  nails,  with  ringing  decisiveness. 
But  when  we  ask,  "But  what  have  these  nails 
held  together?  Where  is  your  carpentry? 
Where  are  your  contented  Outlanders  ?  Where 
is  your  free   South  Africa?    Where   is  your 

124 


The  Mildness  of  the  Yellow  Press 

British  prestige  ?  What  have  your  nails  done  ?  ^ ' 
then  what  answer  is  there?  We  must  go  back 
(with  an  affectionate  sigh)  to  our  Pearson  for 
the  answer  to  the  question  of  what  the  nails 
have  done:  "The  speaker  who  hammered  nails 
into  a  board  won  thousands  of  votes.'' 

Now  the  whole  of  this  passage  is  admirably 
characteristic  of  the  new  journalism  which  Mr. 
Pearson  represents,  the  new  journalism  which 
has  just  purchased  the  Standard.  To  take  one 
instance  out  of  hundreds,  the  incomparable  man 
with  the  board  and  nails  is  described  in  the 
Pearson's  article  as  calling  out  (as  he  smote  the 
symbolic  nail),  "Lie  number  one.  Nailed  to 
the  Mast !  Nailed  to  the  Mast ! "  In  the  whole 
office  there  was  apparently  no  compositor  or 
office-boy  to  point  out  that  we  speak  of  lies 
being  nailed  to  the  counter,  and  not  to  the 
mast.  Nobody  in  the  office  knew  that  Pearson's 
Magazine  was  falling  into  a  stale  Irish  bull, 
which  must  be  as  old  as  St.  Patrick.  This  is 
the  real  and  essential  tragedy  of  the  sale  of  the 
Standard.  It  is  not  merely  that  journalism  is 
victorious  over  literature.  It  is  that  bad  jour- 
nalism is  victorious  over  good  journalism. 

It  is  not  that  one  article  which  we  consider 
costly  and  beautiful  is  being  ousted  by  another 
kind  of  article  which  we  consider  common  or 

"5 


Heretics 


unclean.  It  is  that  of  the  same  article  a  worse 
quality  is  preferred  to  a  better.  If  you  like 
popular  journalism  (as  I  do),  you  will  know  that 
Pearson's  Magazine  is  poor  and  weak  popular 
journalism.  You  will  know  it  as  certainly  as 
you  know  bad  butter.  You  will  know  as  cer- 
tainly that  it  is  poor  popular  journalism  as  you 
know  that  the  Strand,  in  the  great  days  of 
Sherlock  Holmes,  was  good  popular  journalism. 
Mr.  Pearson  has  been  a  monument  of  this 
enormous  banality.  About  everything  he  says 
and  does  there  is  something  infinitely  weak- 
minded.  He  clamours  for  home  trades  and 
employs  foreign  ones  to  print  his  paper.  When 
this  glaring  fact  is  pointed  out,  he  does  not  say 
that  the  thing  was  an  oversight,  like  a  sane  man. 
He  cuts  it  off  with  scissors,  like  a  child  of  three. 
His  very  cunning  is  infantile.  And  like  a  child 
of  three,  he  does  not  cut  it  quite  off.  In  all 
human  records  I  doubt  if  there  is  such  an 
example  of  a  profound  simplicity  in  deception; 
This  is  the  sort  of  intelligence  which  now  sits 
in  the  seat  of  the  sane  and  honourable  old  Tory 
journalism.  If  it  were  really  the  triumph  of 
the  tropical  exuberance  of  the  Yankee  press,  it 
would  be  vulgar,  but  still  tropical.  But  it  is 
not.    We  are  delivered  over  to  the  bramble, 

126 


The  Mildness  of  the  Yellow  Press 

and  from  the  meanest  of  the  shrubs  comes  the 
fire  upon  the  cedars  of  Lebanon. 

The  only  question  now  is  how  much  longer 
the  fiction  will  endure  that  journalists  of  this 
order  represent  public  opinion.  It  may  be 
doubted  whether  any  honest  and  serious  Tariff 
Reformer  would  for  a  moment  maintain  that 
there  was  any  majority  for  Tariff  Reform  in 
the  country  comparable  to  the  ludicrous  pre- 
ponderance which  money  has  given  it  among 
the  great  dailies.  The  only  inference  is  that 
for  purposes  of  real  public  opinion  the  press  is 
now  a  mere  plutocratic  oligarchy.  Doubtless 
the  public  buys  the  wares  of  these  men,  for 
one  reason  or  another.  But  there  is  no  more 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  public  admires  their 
politics  than  that  the  public  admires  the  delicate 
philosophy  of  Mr.  Crosse  or  the  darker  and 
sterner  creed  of  Mr.  Blackwell.  If  these  men 
are  merely  tradesmen,  there  is  nothing  to  say 
except  that  there  are  plenty  like  them  in  the 
Battersea  Park  Road,  and  many  much  better. 
But  if  they  make  any  sort  of  attempt  to  be 
politicians,  we  can  only  point  out  to  them  that 
they  are  not  as  yet  even  good  journalists. 


127 


IX  —  The  Moods  of  Mr,  George  Moore 

MR.  GEORGE  MOORE  began  his 
literary  career  by  writing  his  per- 
sonal confessions;  nor  is  there  any 
harm  in  this  if  he  had  not  con- 
tinued them  for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  He 
is  a  man  of  genuinely  forcible  mind  and  of 
great  command  over  a  kind  of  rhetorical  and 
fugitive  conviction  which  excites  and  pleases. 
He  is  in  a  perpetual  state  of  temporary  honesty. 
He  has  admired  all  the  most  admirable  modem 
eccentrics  until  they  could  stand  it  no  longer. 
Everything  he  writes,  it  is  to  be  fully  admitted, 
has  a  genuine  mental  power.  His  account  of 
his  reason  for  leaving  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  is  possibly  the  most  admirable  tribute 
to  that  communion  which  has  been  written  of 
late  years.  For  the  fact  of  the  matter  is,  that 
the  weakness  which  has  rendered  barren  the 
many  brilliancies  of  Mr.  Moore  is  actually 
that  weakness  which  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  is  at  its  best  in  combating.  Mr. 
Moore  hates  Catholicism  because  it  breaks  up 
the  house  of  looking-glasses  in  which  he  lives. 
Mr.  Moore  does  not  dislike  so  much  being 

128 


The  Moods  of  Mr.  George  Moore 

asked  to  believe  in  the  spiritual  existence  of 
miracles  or  sacraments,  but  he  does  funda- 
mentally dislike  being  asked  to  believe  in  the 
actual  existence  of  other  people.  Like  his 
master  Pater  and  all  the  aesthetes,  his  real 
quarrel  with  life  is  that  it  is  not  a  dream  that 
can  be  moulded  by  the  dreamer.  It  is  not  the 
dogma  of  the  reality  of  the  other  world  that 
troubles  him,  but  the  dogma  of  the  reality  of 
this  world. 

The  truth  is  that  the  tradition  of  Christianity 
(which  is  still  the  only  coherent  ethic  of  Europe) 
rests  on  two  or  three  paradoxes  or  mysteries 
which  can  easily  be  impugned  in  argument  and 
as  easily  justified  in  life.  One  of  them,  for 
instance,  is  the  paradox  of  hope  or  faith  —  that 
the  more  hopeless  is  the  situation  the  more 
hopeful  must  be  the  man.  Stevenson  under- 
stood this,  and  consequently  Mr.  Moore  cannot 
understand  Stevenson.  Another  is  the  paradox 
of  charity  or  chivalry  that  the  weaker  a  thing 
is  the  more  it  should  be  respected,  tjiat  the 
more  indefensible  a  thing  is  the  more  it  should 
appeal  to  us  for  a  certain  kind  of  defence. 
Thackeray  understood  this,  and  therefore  Mr. 
Moore  does  not  understand  Thackeray.  Now, 
one  of  these  very  practical  and  working  myste- 
ries in  the  Christian  tradition,  and  one  which 

129 


Heretics 


the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  as  I  say,  has  done 
her  best  work  in  singHng  out,  is  the  conception 
of  the  sinfulness  of  pride.  Pride  is  a  weakness 
in  the  character;  it  dries  up  laughter,  it  dries 
up  wonder,  it  dries  up  chivalry  and  energy. 
The  Christian  tradition  understands  this;  there- 
fore Mr.  Moore  does  not  understand  the 
Christian  tradition. 

For  the  truth  is  much  stranger  even  than  it 
appears  in  the  formal  doctrine  of  the  sin  of 
pride.  It  is  not  only  true  that  humility  is  a 
much  wiser  and  more  vigorous  thing  than  pride. 
It  is  also  true  that  vanity  is  a  much  wiser  and 
more  vigorous  thing  than  pride.  Vanity  is 
social  —  it  is  almost  a  kind  of  comradeship ; 
pride  is  solitary  and  uncivilized.  Vanity  is 
active;  it  desires  the  applause  of  infinite  multi- 
tudes; pride  is  passive,  desiring  only  the  ap- 
plause of  one  person,  which  it  already  has. 
Vanity  is  humorous,  and  can  enjoy  the  joke 
even  of  itself;  pride  is  dull,  and  cannot  even 
smile.  And  the  whole  of  this  difference  is  the 
difference  between  Stevenson  and  Mr.  George 
Moore,  who,  as  he  informs  us,  has  "brushed 
Stevenson  aside."  I  do  not  know  where  he  has 
been  brushed  to,  but  wherever  it  is  I  fancy  he  is 
having  a  good  time,  because  he  had  tlie  wisdom 
to  be  vain,  and  not  proud.    Stevenson  had  a 

130 


The  Moods  of  Mr.  George  Moore 

windy  vanity;  Mr.  Moore  has  a  dusty  egoism. 
Hence  Stevenson  could  amuse  himself  as  well 
as  us  with  his  vanity;  while  the  richest  effects 
of  Mr.  Moore's  absurdity  are  hidden  from  his 
eyes. 

If  we  compare  this  solemn  folly  with  the 
happy  folly  with  which  Stevenson  belauds  his 
own  books  and  berates  his  own  critics,  we  shall 
not  find  it  difficult  to  guess  why  it  is  that 
Stevenson  at  least  found  a  final  philosophy  of 
some  sort  to  live  by,  while  Mr.  Moore  is  always 
walking  the  world  looking  for  a  new  one. 
Stevenson  had  found  that  the  secret  of  life  lies 
in  laughter  and  humility.  Self  is  the  gorgon. 
Vanity  sees  it  in  the  mirror  of  other  men  and 
lives.  Pride  studies  it  for  itself  and  is  turned 
to  stone. 

It  is  necessary  to  dwell  on  this  defect  in  Mr. 
Moore,  because  it  is  really  the  weakness  of 
work  which  is  not  without  its  strength.  Mr. 
Moore's  egoism  is  not  merely  a  moral  weak- 
ness, it  is  a  very  constant  and  influential  sesthetic 
weakness  as  well.  We  should  really  be  much 
more  interested  in  Mr.  Moore  if  he  were  not 
quite  so  interested  in  himself.  We  feel  as  if  we 
were  being  shown  through  a  gallery  of  really 
fine  pictures,  into  each  of  which,  by  some  use- 
less and  discordant  convention,  the  artist  had 

131 


Heretics 


represented  the  same  figure  in  the  same  attitude. 
*^The  Grand  Canal  with  a  distant  view  of  Mr. 
Moore,"  "Effect  of  Mr.  Moore  through  a 
Scotch  Mist,"  "Mr.  Moore  by  Firelight," 
"Ruins  of  Mr.  Moore  by  Moonlight,"  and  so 
on,  seems  to  be  the  endless  series.  He  would 
no  doubt  reply  that  in  such  a  book  as  this  he 
intended  to  reveal  himself.  But  the  answer  is 
that  in  such  a  book  as  this  he  does  not  succeed. 
One  of  the  thousand  objections  to  the  sin  of 
pride  lies  precisely  in  this,  that  self-conscious- 
ness of  necessity  destroys  self -revelation.  A 
man  who  thinks  a  great  deal  about  himself  will 
try  to  be  many-sided,  attempt  a  theatrical  excel- 
lence at  all  points,  will  try  to  be  an  encyclo- 
paedia of  culture,  and  his  own  real  personality 
will  be  lost  in  that  false  universalism.  Thinking 
about  himself  will  lead  to  trying  to  be  the 
universe ;  trying  to  be  the  universe  will  lead  to 
ceasing  to  be  anything.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
a  man  is  sensible  enough  to  think  only  about 
the  universe;  he  will  think  about  it  in  his  own 
individual  way.  He  will  keep  virgin  the  secret 
of  God;  he  will  see  the  grass  as  no  other  man 
can  see  it,  and  look  at  a  sun  that  no  man  has 
ever  known.  This  fact  is  very  practically 
brought  out  in  Mr.  Moore's  "Confessions." 
In  reading  them  we  do  not  feel  the  presence 

132 


The  Moods  of  Mr.  George  Moore 

of  a  clean-cut  personality  like  that  of  Thackeray 
and  Matthew  Arnold.  We  only  read  a  number 
of  quite  clever  and  largely  conflicting  opinions 
which  might  be  uttered  by  any  clever  person, 
but  which  we  are  called  upon  to  admire  specifi- 
cally, because  they  are  uttered  by  Mr.  Moore. 
He  is  the  only  thread  that  connects  Catholicism 
and  Protestantism,  realism  and  mysticism  —  he 
or  rather  his  name.  He  is  profoundly  absorbed 
even  in  views  he  no  longer  holds,  and  he  expects 
us  to  be.  And  he  intrudes  the  capital  "I"  even 
where  it  need  not  be  intruded  —  even  where  it 
weakens  the  force  of  a  plain  statement.  Where 
another  man  would  say,  "It  is  a  fine  day,"  Mr. 
Moore  says,  "Seen  through  my  temperament, 
the  day  appeared  fine."  Where  another  man 
would  say,  "Milton  has  obviously  a  fine  style," 
Mr.  Moore  would  say,  "As  a  stylist  Milton  had 
always  impressed  me."  The  Nemesis  of  this 
self-centred  spirit  is  that  of  being  totally  in- 
effectual. Mr.  Moore  has  started  many  inter- 
esting crusades,  but  he  has  abandoned  them 
before  his  disciples  could  begin.  Even  when 
he  is  on  the  side  of  the  truth  he  is  as  fickle  as 
the  children  of  falsehood.  Even  when  he  has 
found  reality  he  cannot  find  rest.  One  Irish 
quality  he  has  which  no  Irishman  was  ever 
without  —  pugnacity;  and  that  is  certainly  a 


Heretics 


great  virtue,  especially  in  the  present  age.  But 
he  has  not  the  tenacity  of  conviction  which  goes 
with  the  fighting  spirit  in  a  man  Hke  Bernard 
Shaw.  His  weakness  of  introspection  and 
selfishness  in  all  their  glory  cannot  prevent 
him  fighting;  but  they  will  always  prevent  him 
winning. 


134 


X  —  On  Sandals  and  Simplicity 

THE  great  misfortune  of  the  modern 
English  is  not  at  all  that  they  are 
more  boastful  than  other  people 
(they  are  not);  it  is  that  they  are 
boastful  about  those  particular  things  which 
nobody  can  boast  of  without  losing  them.  A 
Frenchman  can  be  proud  of  being  bold  and 
logical,  and  still  remain  bold  and  logical.  A 
German  can  be  proud  of  being  reflective  and 
orderly,  and  still  remain  reflective  and  orderly. 
But  an  Englishman  cannot  be  proud  of  being 
simple  and  direct,  and  still  remain  simple  and 
direct.  In  the  matter  of  these  strange  virtues, 
to  know  them  is  to  kill  them.  A  man  may  be 
conscious  of  being  heroic  or  conscious  of  being 
divine,  but  he  cannot  (in  spite  of  all  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  poets)  be  conscious  of  being  uncon- 
scious. 

Now,  I  do  not  think  that  it  can  be  honestly 
denied  that  some  portion  ot  this  impossibility 
attaches  to  a  class  very  different  in  their  own 
opinion,  at  least,  to  the  school  of  Anglo-Saxon- 
ism.  I  mean  that  school  of  the  simple  life, 
commonly  associated  with  Tolstoy.    If  a  per- 

135 


Heretics 


petual  talk  about  one's  own  robustness  leads 
to  being  less  robust,  it  is  even  more  true  that  a 
perpetual  talking  about  one's  own  simplicity 
leads  to  being  less  simple.  One  great  com- 
plaint, I  think,  must  stand  against  the  modern 
upholders  of  the  simple  life  —  the  simple  life  in 
all  its  varied  forms,  from  vegetarianism  to  the 
honourable  consistency  of  the  Doukhobors. 
This  complaint  against  them  stands,  that  they 
would  make  us  simple  in  the  unimportant  things, 
but  complex  in  the  important  things.  They 
would  make  us  simple  in  the  things  that  do  not 
matter  —  that  is,  in  diet,  in  costume,  in  eti- 
quette, in  economic  system.  But  they  would 
make  us  complex  in  the  things  that  do  matter  — 
in  philosophy,  in  loyalty,  in  spiritual  acceptance, 
and  spiritual  rejection.  It  does  not  so  very 
much  matter  whether  a  man  eats  a  grilled 
tomato  or  a  plain  tomato ;  it  does  very  much 
matter  whether  he  eats  a  plain  tomato  with  a 
grilled  mind.  The  only  kind  of  simplicity 
worth  preserving  is  the  simplicity  of  the  heart, 
the  simplicity  which  accepts  and  enjoys.  There 
may  be  a  reasonable  doubt  as  to  what  system 
preserves  this;  there  can  surely  be  no  doubt  that 
a  system  of  simplicity  destroys  it.  There  is  more 
simplicity  in  the  man  who  eats  caviar  on  impulse 
than  in  the  man  who  eats  grape-nuts  on  principle. 

136 


On  Sandals  and  Simplicity 

The  chief  error  of  these  people  is  to  be  found/ 
in  the  very  phrase  to  which  they  are  most 
attached  —  "plain  living  and  high  thinking." 
These  people  do  not  stand  in  need  of,  will  not 
be  improved  by,  plain  living  and  high  thinking. 
They  stand  in  need  of  the  contrary.  They 
would  be  improved  by  high  living  and  plain 
thinking.  A  little  high  living  (I  say,  having  a 
full  sense  of  responsibility,  a  little  high  living) 
would  teach  them  the  force  and  meaning  of  the 
human  festivities,  of  the  banquet  that  has  gone 
on  from  the  beginning  of  the  world.  It  would 
teach  them  the  historic  fact  that  the  artificial  is, 
if  anything,  older  than  the  natural.  It  would 
teach  them  that  the  loving-cup  is  as  old  as  any 
hunger.  It  would  teach  them  that  ritualism  is 
older  than  any  religion/  And  a  little  plain 
thinking  would  teach  them  how  harsh  and 
fanciful  are  the  mass  of  their  own  ethics,  how 
very  civilized  and  very  complicated  must  be 
the  brain  of  the  Tolstoyan  who  really  believes 
it  to  be  evil  to  love  one's  country  and  wicked  to 
strike  a  blow. 

A  man  approaches,  wearing  sandals  and  sim- 
ple raiment,  a  raw  tomato  held  firmly  in  his 
right  hand,  and  says,  ''The  affections  of  family 
and  country  alike  are  hindrances  to  the  fuller 
development  of  human  love;''  but  the  plain 

137 


Heretics 


thinker  will  only  answer  him,  with  a  wonder 
not  untinged  with  admiration,  *^What  a  great 
deal  of  trouble  you  must  have  taken  in  order 
to  feel  like  that."  High  living  will  reject  the 
tomato.  Plain  thinking  will  equally  decisively 
reject  the  idea  of  the  invariable  sinfulness  of 
war.  High  living  will  convince  us  that  nothing 
is  more  materialistic  than  to  despise  a  pleasure 
as  purely  material.  And  plain  thinking  will 
convince  us  that  nothing  is  more  materialistic 
than  to  reserve  our  horror  chiefly  for  material 
wounds. 

The  only  simplicity  that  matters  is  the  sim- 
plicity of  the  heart.  If  that  be  gone,  it  can  be 
brought  back  by  no  turnips  or  cellular  clothing; 
but  only  by  tears  and  terror  and  the  fires  that 
are  not  quenched.  If  that  remain,  it  matters 
very  little  if  a  few  Early  Victorian  armchairs 
remain  along  with  it.  Let  us  put  a  complex 
entree  into  a  simple  old  gentleman;  let  us  not 
put  a  simple  entree  into  a  complex  old  gentleman. 
So  long  as  human  society  will  leave  my  spiritual 
inside  alone,  I  will  allow  it,  with  a  comparative 
submission,  to  work  its  wild  will  with  my 
physical  interior.  I  will  submit  to  cigars.  I 
will  meekly  embrace  a  bottle  of  Burgundy. 
I  will  humble  myself  to  a  hansom  cab.  If  only 
by  this  means  I  may  preserve  to  myself  the 

138 


On  Sandals  and  Simplicity 

virginity  of  the  spirit,  which  enjoys  with  aston- 
ishment and  fear.     I  do  not  say  that  these  are 
the  only  methods  of  preserving  it.     I  incline  to 
the  belief  that  there  are  others.     But  I  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  simplicity  which  lacks 
the  fear,  the  astonishment,  and  the  joy  alike. 
I  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  devilish 
vision  of  a  child  who  is  too  simple  to  like  toys. 
The  child  is,  indeed,  in  these,  and  many  other 
matters,  the  best  guide.    And  in  nothing  is  the 
child  so  righteously  childlike,  in  nothing  does 
he  exhibit  more  accurately  the  sounder  order  of 
simplicity,  than  in  the  fact  that  he  sees  every- 
thing with  a  simple  pleasure,  even  the  complex 
things.     The  false  type  of  naturalness  harps 
always  on  the  distinction  between  the  natural 
and  the  artificial.     The  higher  kind  of  natural- 
ness ignores  that  distinction.     To  the  child  the 
tree  and  the  lamp-post  are  as  natural  and  as 
artificial  as  each  other;  or  rather,  neither  of 
them  are  natural  but  both  supernatural.    For 
both  are  splendid  and  unexplained.    The  flower 
with  which  God  crowns  the  one,  and  the  flame 
with  which  Sam  the  lamplighter  crowns  the 
other,  are  equally  of  the  gold  of  fairy-tales.     In 
the  middle  of  the  wildest  fields  the  most  rustic 
child  is,  ten  to  one,  playing  at  steam-engines. 
And  the  only  spiritual  or  philosophical  objection 

139 


Heretics 


to  steam-engines  is  not  that  men  pay  for  them 
or  work  at  them,  or  make  them  very  ugly,  or 
even  that  men  are  killed  by  them;  but  merely 
that  men  do  not  play  at  them.  The  evil  is  that 
the  childish  poetry  of  clockwork  does  not  re- 
main. The  wrong  is  not  that  engines  are  too 
much  admired,  but  that  they  are  not  admired 
enough.  The  sin  is  not  that  engines  are 
mechanical,  but  that  men  are  mechanical. 

In  this  matter,  then,  as  in  all  the  other  matters 
treated  in  this  book,  our  main  conclusion  is  that 
it  is  a  fundamental  point  of  view,  a  philosophy 
or  religion  which  is  needed,  and  not  any  change 
in  habit  or  social  routine.  The  things  we  need 
most  for  immediate  practical  purpose«o  are  all 
abstractions.  We  need  a  right  view  of  the 
human  lot,  a  right  view  of  the  human  society; 
and  if  we  were  living  eagerly  and  angrily  in  the 
enthusiasm  of  those  things,  we  should,  ipso  jactOj 
be  living  simply  in  the  genuine  and  spiritual 
sense./  Desire  and  danger  make  every  one 
simple.  And  to  those  who  talk  to  us  with 
interfering  eloquence  about  Jaeger  and  the 
pores  of  the  skin,  and  about  Plasmon  and  the 
coats  of  the  stomach,  at  them  shall  only  be 
hurled  the  words  that  are  hurled  at  fops  and 
gluttons,  ^'Take  no  thought  what  ye  shall  eat 
or  what  ye  shall  drink,  or  wherewithal  ye  shall 

140 


On  Sandals  and  Simplicity 

be  clothed.  For  after  all  these  things  do  the 
Gentiles  seek.  But  seek  first  the  kingdom  of 
God  and  His  righteousness,  and  all  these  things 
shall  be  added  unto  you.''  Those  amazing 
words  are  not  only  extraordinarily  good,  prac- 
tical politics;  they  are  also  superlatively  good 
hygiene.  The  one  supreme  way  of  making  all 
those  processes  go  right,  the  processes  of  health, 
and  strength,  and  grace,  and  beauty,  the  one 
and  only  way  of  making  certain  of  their  accu- 
racy, is  to  think  about  something  else.  If  a 
man  is  bent  on  climbing  into  the  seventh  heaven, 
he  may  be  quite  easy  about  the  pores  of  his 
skin.  If  he  harnesses  his  waggon  to  a  star,  the 
process  will  have  a  most  satisfactory  effect  upon 
the  coats  of  his  stomach.  For  the  thing  called 
"taking  thought,''  the  thing  for  which  the  best 
modern  word  is  "rationalizing,"  is  in  its  nature, 
inapplicable  to  all  plain  and  urgent  things. 
Men  take  thought  and  ponder  rationalistically, 
touching  remote  things  —  things  that  only  theo- 
retically matter,  such  as  the  transit  of  Venus. 
But  only  at  their  peril  can  men  rationalize 
about  so  practical  a  matter  as  health. 


141 


XI  —  Science  and  the  Savages 

A  PERMANENT  disadvantage  of  the 
study  of  folk-lore  and  kindred  sub- 
jects is  that  the  man  of  science  can 
hardly  be  in  the  nature  of  things 
very  frequently  a  man  of  the  world.  He  is  a 
student  of  nature;  he  is  scarcely  ever  a  student 
of  human  nature.  And  even  where  this  diffi- 
culty is  overcome,  and  he  is  in  some  sense  a 
student  of  human  nature,  this  is  only  a  very 
faint  beginning  of  the  painful  progress  towards 
being  human.  For  the  study  of  primitive  race 
and  religion  stands  apart  in  one  important 
respect  from  all,  or^^nearly  all,  the  ordinary 
scientific  studies.  JA  man  can  understand  as- 
"tronomy  only" By  being  an  astronomer;  he  can 
understand  entomology  only  by  being  an  ento- 
mologist (or,  perhaps,  an  insect);  but  he  can 
understand  a  great  deal  of  anthropology  merely 
by  being  a  man.  He  is  himself  the  animal 
which  he  studies.  Hence  arises  the  fact  which 
strikes  the  eye  everywhere  in  the  records  of 
ethnology  and  folk-lore  —  the  fact  that  the 
same  frigid  and  detached  spirit  which  leads  to 
success  in  the  study  of  astronomy  or  botany 

142 


Science  and  the  Savages 

leads  to  disaster  in  the  study  of  mythology  or 
human  origins.  It  is  necessary  to  cease  to  be  a 
man  in  order  to  do  justice  to  a  microbe;  it  is 
not  necessary  to  cease  to  be  a  man  in  order  to 
do  justice  to  men.  That  same  suppression  of 
sympathies,  that  same  waving  away  of  intui- 
tions or  guess-work  which  make  a  man  preter- 
naturally  clever  in  dealing  with  the  stomach  of 
a  spider,  will  make  him  preternaturally  stupid 
in  dealing  with  the  heart  of  man.  He  is  making 
himself  inhuman  in  order  to  understand  hu- 
manity. An  ignorance  of  the  other  world  is 
boasted  by  many  men  of  science;  but  in  this 
matter  their  defect  arises,  not  from  ignorance  of 
the  other  world,  but  from  ignorance  of  this 
world.  For  the  secrets  about  which  anthro- 
pologists concern  themselves  can  be  best  learnt, 
not  from  books  or  voyages,  but  from  the  ordi- 
nary commerce  of  man  with  man.  The  secret 
of  why  some  savage  tribe  worships  monkeys  or 
the  moon  is  not  to  be  found  even  by  travelling 
among  those  savages  and  taking  down  their 
answers  in  a  note-book,  although  the  cleverest 
man  may  pursue  this  course.  The  answer  to 
the  riddle  is  in  England ;  it  is  in  London ;  nay,  it 
is  in  his  own  heart.  When  a  man  has  discovered 
why  men  in  Bond  Street  wear  black  hats  he  will 
at  the  same  moment  have  discovered  why  men 

143 


Heretics 


in  Timbuctoo  wear  red  feathers.  The  mystery 
in  the  heart  of  some  savage  war-dance  should 
not  be  studied  in  books  of  scientific  travel;  it 
should  be  studied  at  a  subscription  ball.  If  a 
man  desires  to  find  out  the  origins  of  religions, 
let  him  not  goJta.the  Sandwich  Islands;  let  him 
go  to^hurchj  If  a  man  wishes  to  know  the 
of igm  of  human  society,  to  know  what  society, 
philosophically  speaking,  really  is,  let  him  not 
go  into  the  British  Museum;  let  him  go  into 
society. 

is  total  misunderstanding  of  the  real  nature 
of  ceremonial  gives  rise  to  the  most  awkward 
and  dehumanized  versions  of  the  conduct  of 
men  in  rude  lands  or  ages.  The  man  of  science, 
not  realizing  that  ceremonial  is  essentially  a 
thing  which  is  done  without  a  reason,  has  to 
find  a  reason  for  every  sort  of  ceremonial,  and, 
as  might  be  supposed,  the  reason  is  generally 
a  very  absurd  one  —  absurd  because  it  origi- 
nates not  in  the  simple  mind  of  the  barbarian, 
but  in  the  sophisticated  mind  of  the  professor. 
The  learned  man  will  say,  for  instance,  ''The 
natives  of  Mumbojumbo  Land  believe  that  the 
dead  man  can  eat,  and  will  require  food  upon 
his  journey  to  the  other  world.  This  is  attested 
by  the  fact  that  they  place  food  in  the  grave, 
and  that  any  family  not  complying  with  this 

144 


Science  and  the  Savages 

rite  is  the  object  of  the  anger  of  the  priests 
and  the  tribe."  To  any  one  acquainted  with 
humanity  this  way  of  talking  is  topsy-turvy. 
It  is  like  saying,  "The  English  in  the  twentieth 
century  believed  that  a  dead  man  could  smell. 
This  is  attested  by  the  fact  that  they  always 
covered  his  grave  with  lilies,  violets,  or  other 
flowers.  Some  priestly  and  tribal  terrors  were 
evidently  attached  to  the  neglect  of  this  action, 
as  we  have  records  of  several  old  ladies  who 
were  very  much  disturbed  in  mind  because 
their  wreaths  had  not  arrived  in  time  for  the 
funeral."  It  may  be  of  course  that  savages  put 
food  with  a  dead  man  because  they  think  that  a 
dead  man  can  eat,  or  weapons  with  a  dead  man 
because  they  think  that  a  dead  man  can  fight. 
But  personally  I  do  not  believe  that  they  think 
anything  of  the  kind.  I  believe  they  put  food 
or  weapons  on  the  dead  for  the  same  reason 
that  we  put  flowers,  because  it  is  an  exceedingly 
natural  and  obvious  thing  to  do.  We  do  not 
understand,  it  is  true,  the  emotion  which  makes 
us  think  it  obvious  and  natural;  but  that  is 
because,  like  all  the  important  emotions  of 
human  existence,  it  is  essentially  irrational. 
We  do  not  understand  the  savage  for  the  same 
reason  that  the  savage  does  not  understand 
himself.    And  the  savage  does  not  understand 

145 


Heretics 


himself  for  the  same  reason  that  we  do  not 
understand  ourselves  either. 
/The  obvious  truth  is  that  the  moment  any 
inatter  has  passed  through  the  human  mind  it 
/is  finally  and  for  ever  spoUt  for  all  purposes 
/of  science.  It  has  become  a  thing  incurably 
?  mysterious  and  infinite ;  this  mortal  has  put  on 
immortality.  Even  what  we  call  our  material 
desires  are  spiritual,  because  they  are  human. 
Science  can  analyse  a  pork-chop,  and  say  how 
much  of  it  is  phosphorus  and  how  much  is 
protein;  but  science  cannot  analyse  any  man's 
wish  for  a  pork-chop,  and  say  how  much  of  it 
is  hunger,  how  much  custom,  how  much  ner- 
vous fancy,  how  much  a  haunting  love  of  the 
beautiful.  The  man's  desire  for  the  pork-chop 
remains  literally  as  mystical  and  ethereal  as  his 
desire  for  heaven.  All  attempts,  therefore,  at 
a  science  of  any  human  things,  at  a  science  of 
history,  a  science  of  folk-lore,  a  science  of  sociol- 
ogy, are  by  their  nature  not  merely  hopeless, 
but  crazy.  You  can  no  more  be  certain  in 
economic  history  that  a  man's  desire  for  money 
was  merely  a  desire  for  money  than  you  can  be 
certain  in  hagiology  that  a  saint's  desire  for 
God  was  merely  a  desire  for  God.  And  this 
kind  of  vagueness  in  the  primary  phenomena  of 
the  study  is  an  absolutely  final  blow  to  anything 

146 


Science  and  the  Savages 

in  the  nature  of  a  science.  Men  can  construct 
a  science  with  very  few  instruments,  or  with 
very  plain  instruments;  but  no  one  on  earth 
could  construct  a  science  with  unreliable  instru- 
ments. A  man  might  work  out  the  whole  of 
mathematics  with  a  handful  of  pebbles,  but  not 
with  a  handful  of  clay  which  was  always  falling 
apart  into  new  fragments,  and  falling  together 
into  new  combinations.  A  man  might  measure 
heaven  and  earth  with  a  reed,  but  not  with  a 
growing  reed.  ..- 

As  one  of  the  enormous  follies  of  folk-lore,  let 
us  take  the  case  of  the  transmigration  of  stories, 
and  the  alleged  unity  of  their  source.  Story 
after  story  the  scientific  mythologists  have  cut 
out  of  its  place  in  history,  and  pinned  side  by 
side  with  similar  stories  in  their  museum  of 
fables.  The  process  is  industrious,  it  is  fasci- 
nating, and  the  whole  of  it  rests  on  one  of  the 
plainest  fallacies  in  the  world.  That  a  story 
has  been  told  all  over  the  place  at  some  time  or 
other,  not  only  does  not  prove  that  it  never 
really  happened;  it  does  not  even  faintly  indi- 
cate or  make  slightly  more  probable  that  it 
never  happened.  That  a  large  number  of  fish- 
ermen have  falsely  asserted  that  they  have 
caught  a  pike  two  feet  long,  does  not  in  the 
least  affect  the  question  of  whether  any  one  ever 

147 


Heretics 


really  did  so.  That  numberless  journalists 
announce  a  Franco- German  war  merely  for 
money  is  no  evidence  one  way  or  the  other  upon 
the  dark  question  of  whether  such  a  war  ever 
occurred.  Doubtless  in  a  few  hundred  years 
the  innumerable  Franco- German  wars  that  did 
not  happen  will  have  cleared  the  scientific  mind 
of  any  belief  in  the  legendary  war  of  '70  which 
did.  But  that  will  be  because  if  folk-lore  stu- 
dents remain  at  all,  their  nature  will  be  un- 
changed; and  their  services  to  folk-lore  will  be 
still  as  they  are  at  present,  greater  than  they 
know.  For  in  truth  these  men  do  something 
far  more  godlike  than  studying  legends;  they 
create,  them. 

r'^here  are  two  kinds  of  stories  which  the 
f  scientists  say  cannot  be  true,  because  everybody 
tells  them.  The  first  class  consists  of  the  stories 
which  are  told  everywhere,  because  they  are 
somewhat  odd  or  clever;  there  is  nothing  in  the 
world  to  prevent  their  having  happened  to 
somebody  as  an  adventure  any  more  than  there 
is  anything  to  prevent  their  having  occurred,  as 
they  certainly  did  occur,  to  somebody  as  an 
idea.  But  they  are  not  likely  to  have  happened 
to  many  people.  The  second  class  of  their 
"myths"  consist  of  the  stories  that  are  told 
everywhere  for  the  simple  reason  that  they  hap- 

148 


Science  and  the  Savages 

pen  everywhere.  Of  the  j&rst  class,  for  instance, 
we  might  take  such  an  example  as  the  story  of 
William  Tell,  now  generally  ranked  among 
legends  upon  the  sole  ground  that  it  is  found  in 
the  tales  of  other  peoples.  Now,  it  is  obvious 
that  this  was  told  everywhere  because  whether 
true  or  fictitious  it  is  what  is  called  *^a  good 
story;"  it  is  odd,  exciting,  and  it  has  a  climax. 
But  to  suggest  that  some  such  eccentric  incident 
can  never  have  happened  in  the  whole  history 
of  archery,  or  that  it  did  not  happen  to  any 
particular  person  of  whom  it  is  told,  is  stark 
impudence.  The  idea  of  shooting  at  a  mark 
attached  to  some  valuable  or  beloved  person  is 
an  idea  doubtless  that  might  easily  have  oc- 
curred to  any  inventive  poet.  But  it  is  also  an 
idea  that  might  easily  occur  to  any  boastful 
archer.  It  might  be  one  of  the  fantastic  caprices 
of  some  story-teller.  It  might  equally  well  be 
one  of  the  fantastic  caprices  of  some  tyrant. 
It  might  occur  first  in  real  life  and  afterwards 
occur  in  legends.  Or  it  might  just  as  well  occur 
first  in  legends  and  afterwards  occur  m  real 
Ji|eJ  If  no  apple  has  ever  been  shot  off  a  boy's 
head  from  the  beginning  of  the  world,  it  may 
be  done  to-morrow  morning,  and  by  somebody 
who  has  never  heard  of  William  Tell. 
This  type  of  tale,  indeed,  may  be  pretty  fairly 
149 


Heretics 


paralleled  with  the  ordinary  anecdote  terminat- 
ing in  a  repartee  or  an  Irish  bull.  Such  a  retort, 
as  the  famous  "  Je  ne  vois  pas  la  necessite"  we 
have  all  seen  attributed  to  Talleyrand,  to  Vol- 
taire, to  Henri  Quatre,  to  an  anonymous  judge, 
and  so  on.  But  this  variety  does  not  in  any 
way  make  it  more  likely  that  the  thing  was 
never  said  at  all.  It  is  highly  likely  that  it  was 
really  said  by  somebody  unknown.  It  is  highly 
likely  that  it  was  really  said  by  Talleyrand.  In 
any  case,  it  is  not  any  more  difficult  to  believe 
that  the  wo/  might  have  occurred  to  a  man  in 
conversation  than  to  a  man  writing  memoirs. 
It  might  have  occurred  to  any  of  the  men  I 
have  mentioned.  But  there  is  this  point  of 
distinction  about  it,  that  it  is  not  likely  to  have 
occurred  to  all  of  them.  And  this  is  where  the 
first  class  of  so-called  myth  differs  from  the 
secQud,  to  which  I  have  previously  referred. 
Eoif  there  is  a  second  class  of  incident  found  to 
be  common  to  the  stories  of  five  or  six  heroes, 
say  to  Sigurd,  to  Hercules,  to  Rustem,  to  the 
Cid,  and  so  on.  And  the  peculiarity  of  this 
myth  is  that  not  only  is  it  highly  reasonable  to 
imagine  that  it  really  happened  to  one  hero, 
but  it  is  highly  reasonable  to  imagine  that  it 
really  happened  to  all  of  them.  Such  a  story, 
for  instance,  is  that  of  a  great  man  having  his 

ISO 


Science  and  the  Savages 

strength  swayed  or  thwarted  by  the  mysterious 
weakness  of  a  woman.  The  anecdotal  story, 
the  story  of  William  Tell,  is  as  I  have  said,  pop- 
ular, because  it  is  peculiar.  But  this  kind  of 
story,  the  story  of  Samson  and  Delilah,  of 
Arthur  and  Guinevere,  is  obviously  popular 
because  it  is  not  peculiar.  It  is  popular  as 
good,  quiet  fiction  is  popular,  because  it  tells 
the  truth  about  people.  If  the  ruin  of  Samson 
by  a  woman,  and  the  ruin  of  Hercules  by  a 
woman,  have  a  common  legendary  origin,  it  is 
gratifying  to  know  that  we  can  also  explain,  as 
a  fable,  the  ruin  of  Nelson  by  a  woman  and  the 
ruin  of  Parnell  by  a  woman.  And,  indeed,  I 
have  no  doubt  whatever  that,  some  centuries 
hence,  the  students  of  folk-lore  will  refuse  alto- 
gether to  believe  that  Elizabeth  Barrett  eloped 
with  Robert  Browning,  and  will  prove  their 
point  up  to  the  hilt  by  the  unquestionable  fact 
that  the  whole  fiction  of  the  period  was  full  of 
such  elopements  from  end  to  end. 
/  Possibly  the  most  pathetic  of  all  the  delusions 
/of  the  modern  students  of  primitive  belief  is 
the  notion  they  have  about  the  thing  they  call 
anthropomorphism.  They  believe  that  primi- 
tive min  attributed  phenomena  to  a  god  in 
human  form  in  order  to  explain  them,  because 
his  mind  in  its  sullen  limitation  could  not  reach 

151 


Heretics 


any  further  than  his  own  clownish  existence. 
The  thunder  was  called  the  voice  of  a  man,  the 
lightning  the  eyes  of  a  man,  because  by  this 
explanation  they  were  made  more  reasonable 
and  comfortable.  The  final  cure  for  all  this 
kind  of  philosophy  is  to  walk  down  a  lane  at 
night.  Any  one  who  does  so  will  discover  very 
quickly  that  men  pictured  something  semi- 
human  at  the  back  of  all  things,  not  because 
such  a  thought  was  natural,  but  because  it  was 
supernatural;  not  because  it  made  things  more 
comprehensible,  but  because  it  made  them  a 
hundred  times  more  incomprehensible  and 
mysterious.  For  a  man  walking  down  a  lane 
at  night  can  see  the  conspicuous  fact  that  as 
long  as  nature  keeps  to  her  own  course,  she 
has  no  power  with  us  at  all.  As  long  as  a  tree 
is  a  tree,  it  is  a  top-heavy  monster  with  a 
hundred  arms,  a  thousand  tongues,  and  only 
one  leg.  But  so  long  as  a  tree  is  a  tree,  it 
does  not  frighten  us  at  all.  It  begins  to  be 
something  alien,  to  be  something  strange,  only 
,  when  it  looks  like  ourselves.  When  a  tree 
really  looks  like  a  man  our  knees  knock  under 
us.  And  when  the  whole  universe  looks  like 
a  man  we  fall  on  our  faces. 


152 


XII — Paganism  and  Mr,  Lowes  Dickinson 

OF  the  New  Paganism  (or  neo-Pagan- 
ism),  as  it  was  preached  flamboy- 
antly by  Mr.  Swinburne  or  deKcately 
by  Walter  Pater,  there  is  no  neces- 
sity to  take  any  very  grave  account,  except  as 
a  thing  which  left  behind  it  incomparable  exer- 
cises in  the  English  language.  The  New  Pagar^ 
ism  is  no  longer  new,  and  it  never  at  any  time 
bore  the  smallest  resemblance  to  Paganism. 
The  ideas  about  the  ancient  civilization  which 
it  has  left  loose  in  the  public  mind  are  certainly 
extraordinary  enough.  The  term  ^^ pagan''  is 
continually  used  in  fiction  and  light  literature 
as  meaning  a  man  without  any  religion,  whereas 
a  pagan  was  generally  a  man  with  about  half  a 
dozen.  The  pagans,  according  to  this  notion, 
were  continually  crowning  themselves  with 
flowers  and  dancing  about  in  an  irresponsible 
state,  whereas,  if  there  were  two  things  that  the 
best  pagan  civilization  did  honestly  believe  in, 
they  were  a  rather  too  rigid  dignity  and  a  much 
too  rigid  responsibility.  Pagans  are  depicted 
as  above  all  things  inebriate  and  lawless, 
whereas  they  were  above  all  things  reasonable 

153 


Heretics 


and  respectable.  They  are  praised  as  disobe- 
dient when  they  had  only  one  great  virtue  — 
civic  obedience.  They  are  envied  and  admired 
as  shamelessly  happy  when  they  had  only  one 
great  sin  —  despair. 

Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson,  the  most  pregnant 
and  provocative  of  recent  writers  on  this  and_ 
similar  subjects,  is  far  too  solid  a  man  to  have 
fallen  into  this  old  error  of  the  mere  anarchy 
of  Paganism.  In  order  to  make  hay  of  that 
Hellenic  enthusiasm  which  has  as  its  ideal  mere 
2Pppetite  and  egotism,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
know  much  philosophy,  but  merely  to  know  a 
little  Greek.  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  knows  a 
great  deal  of  philosophy,  and  also  a  greal  deal 
of  Greek,  and  his  error,  if  error  he  has,  is  not 
that  of  the  crude  hedonist.  But  the  contrast 
which  he  offers  between  Christianity  and  Pagan- 
ism in  the  matter  of  moral  ideals  —  a  contrast 
which  he  states  very  ably  in  a  paper  called 
^^How  long  halt  ye?"  which  appeared  in  the 
Independent  Review  —  does,  I  think,  contain  an 
error  of  a  deeper  kind.  According  to  him,  the 
ideal  of  Paganism  was  not,  indeed,  a  mere 
frenzy  of  lust  and  liberty  and  caprice,  but  was 
an  ideal  of  fulL  and  satisfied,  humanity.  Ac- 
cording to  him,  the  ideal  of  Christianity  was 
the  ideal  of  asceticism.    When  I  say  that  I 

IS4 


Paganism  and  Mr,  Lowes  Dickinson 

think  this  idea  wholly  wrong  as  a  matter  of 
philosophy  and  history,  I  am  not  talking  for 
the  moment  about  any  ideal  Christianity  of  my 
own,  or  even  of  any  primitive  Christianity  un- 
defiled  by  after  events.  I  am  not,  like  so  many 
modern  Christian  idealists,  basing  my  case  upon 
certain  things  which  Christ  said.  Neither  am 
I,  like  so  many  other  Christian  idealists,  basing 
my  case  upon  certain  things  that  Christ  forgot 
to  say.  I  take  historic  Christianity  with  all  its 
sins  upon  its  head;  I  take  it,  as  I  would  take 
Jacobinism,  or  Mormonism,  or  any  other  mixed 
or  unpleasing  human  product,  and  I  say  that 
the  meaning  of  its  action  was  not  to  be  found 
in  asceticism.  I  say  that  its  point  of  departure 
from  Paganism  was  not  asceticism.  I  say  that 
its  point  of  difference  with  the  modern  world 
was  not  asceticism.  I  say  that  St.  Simeon 
Stylites  had  not  his  main  inspiration  in  asceti- 
cism. I  say  that  the  main  Christian  impulse 
cannot  be  described  as  asceticism,  even  in  the 
ascetics. 

Let  me  set  about  making  the  matter  clear. 
There  is  one  broad  fact  about  the  relations  of 
Christianity  and  Paganism  which  is  so  simple 
that  many  will  smile  at  it,  but  which  is  so 
important  that  all  modems  forget  it.  The 
primary  fact  about  Christianity  and  Paganism 

155 


Heretics 


is  that  one  came  after  the  other.  Mr.  Lowes 
Dickmson  speaks  of  them  as  if  they  were 
parallel  ideals  —  even  speaks  as  if  Paganism 
were  the  newer  of  the  two,  and  the  more  fitted 
for  a  new  age.  He  suggests  that  the  Pagan 
ideal  will  be  the  ultimate  good  of  man;  but  if 
that  is  so,  we  must  at  least  ask  with  more 
curiosity  than  he  allows  for,  why  it  was  that 
man  actually  found  his  ultimate  good  on  earth 
under  the  stars,  and  threw  it  away  again.  It 
is  this  extraordinary  enigma  to  which  I  propose 
to  attempt  an  answer. 

There  is  only  one  thing  in  the  modern  world 
that  has  been  face  to  face  with  Paganism ;  there 
is  only  one  thing  in  the  modem  world  which  in 
that  sense  knows  anything  about  Paganism :  and 
that  is  Christianity.  That  fact  is  really  the 
weak  point  in  the  whole  of  that  hedonistic  neo- 
Paganism  of  which  I  have  spoken.  All  that 
genuinely  remains  of  the  ancient  hymns  or  the 
ancient  dances  of  Europe,  all  that  has  honestly 
come  to  us  from  the  festivals  of  Phoebus  or 
Pan,  is  to  be  found  in  the  festivals  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  If  any  one  wants  to  hold  the 
end  of  a  chain  which  really  goes  back  to  the 
heathen  mysteries,  he  had  better  take  hold  of 
a  festoon  of  flowers  at  Easter  or  a  string  of 
sausages  at  Christmas.    Everything  else  in  the 

156 


Paganism  and  Mr,  Lowes  Dickinson 

modern  world  is  of  Christian  origin,  even  every- 
thing that  seems  most  anti-Christian.  The 
French  Revolution  is  of  Christian  origin.  The 
newspaper  is  of  Christian  origin.  The  anar- 
chists are  of  Christian  origin.  Physical  science 
is  of  Christian  origin.  The  attack  on  Chris- 
tianity is  of  Christian  origin.  There  is  one 
thing,  and  one  thing  only,  in  existence  at  the 
present  day  which  can  in  any  sense  accurately 
be  said  to  be  of  pagan  origin,  and  that  is 
Christianity. 

The  real  difference  between  Paganism  and 
Christianity  is  perfectly  summed  up  in  the 
difference  between  the  pagan,  or  natural,  vir- 
tues, and  those  three  virtues  of  Christianity 
which  the  Church  of  Rome  calls  virtues  of  grace. 
The  pagan,  or  rational,  virtues  are  such  things 
as  justice  and  temperance,  and  Christianity  has 
adopted  them.  The  three  mystical  virtues 
which  Christianity  has  not  adopted,  but  in- 
vented, are  faith,  hope,  and  charity.  Now 
much  easy  and  foolish  Christian  rhetoric  could 
easily  be  poured  out  upon  those  three  words, 
but  I  desire  to  confine  myself  to  the  two  facts 
which  are  evident  about  them.  The  first  evi- 
dent fact  (in  marked  contrast  to  the  delusion  of 
the  dancing  pagan)  —  the  first  evident  fact,  I 
say,  is  that  the  pagan  virtues,  such  as  justice 

157 


Heretics 


and  temperance,  are  the  sad  virtues,  and  that 
the  mystical  virtues  of  faith,  hope,  and  charity 
are  the  gay  and  exuberant  virtues.  And  the 
second  evident  fact,  which  is  even  more  evident, 
is  the  fact  that  the  pagan  virtues  are  the  reason- 
able virtues,  and  that  the  Christian  virtues  of 
faith,  hope,  and  charity  are  in  their  essence  as 
unreasonable  as  they  can  be. 

As  the  word  '^ unreasonable"  is  open  to  mis- 
understanding, the  matter  may  be  more  accu- 
rately put  by  saying  that  each  one  of  these 
Christian  or  mystical  virtues  involves  a  paradox 
in  its  own  nature,  and  that  this  is  not  true  of 
any  of  the  t3^ically  pagan  or  rationalist  virtues. 
Justice  consists  in  finding  out  a  certain  thing 
due  to  a  certain  man  and  giving  it  to  him. 
Temperance  consists  in  finding  out  the  proper 
limit  of  a  particular  indulgence  and  adhering  to 
that.  But  charity  means  pardoning  what  is 
unpardonable,  or  it  is  no  virtue  at  all.  Hope 
means  hoping  when  things  are  hopeless,  or  it 
is  no  virtue  at  all.  And  faith  means  believing 
the  incredible,  or  it  is  no  virtue  at  all. 

It  is  somewhat  amusing,  indeed,  to  notice  the 
difference  between  the  fate  of  these  three  para- 
doxes in  the  fashion  of  the  modem  mind. 
Charity  is  a  fashionable  virtue  in  our  time;  it 
is  lit  up  by  the  gigantic  firelight  of  Dickens. 

158 


Paganism  and  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson 

Hope  is  a  fashionable  virtue  to-day;  our  at- 
tention has  been  arrested  for  it  by  the  sudden 
and  silver  trumpet  of  Stevenson.  But  faith  is 
unfashionable,  and  it  is  customary  on  every 
side  to  cast  against  it  the  fact  that  it  is  a  para- 
dox. Everybody  mockingly  repeats  the  famous 
childish  definition  that  faith  is  ^^the  power  of 
believing  that  which  we  know  to  be  untrue." 
Yet  it  is  not  one  atom  more  paradoxical  than 
hope  or  charity.  Charity  is  the  power  of  de- 
fending that  which  we  know  to  be  indefensible. 
Hope  is  the  power  of  being  cheerful  in  circum- 
stances which  we  know  to  be  desperate.  It  is 
true  that  there  is  a  state  of  hope  which  belongs 
to  bright  prospects  and  the  morning;  but  that 
is  not  the  virtue  of  hope.  The  virtue  of  hope 
exists  only  in  earthquake  and  eclipse.  It  is 
true  that  there  is  a  thing  crudely  called  charity, 
which  means  charity  to  the  deserving  poor;  but 
charity  to  the  deserving  is  not  charity  at  all, 
but  justice.  It  is  the  undeserving  who  require 
it,  and  the  ideal  either  does  not  exist  at  all,  or 
exists  wholly  for  them.  For  practical  purposes 
it  is  at  the  hopeless  moment  that  we  require 
the  hopeful  man,  and  the  virtue  either  does  not 
exist  at  all,  or  begins  to  exist  at  that  moment. 
Exactly  at  the  instant  when  hope  ceases  to  be 
reasonable  it  begins  to  be  useful. 

159 


Heretics 


Now  the  old  pagan  world  went  perfectly 
straightforward  until  it  discovered  that  going 
straightforward  is  an  enormous  mistake.  It 
was  nobly  and  beautifully*  reasonable,  and  dis- 
covered in  its  death-pang  this  lasting  and 
valuable  truth,  a  heritage  for  the  ages,  that 
reasonableness  will  not  do.  The  pagan  age 
was  truly  an  Eden  or  golden  age,  in  this  essen- 
tial sense,  that  it  is  not  to  be  recovered.  And 
it  is  not  to  be  recovered  in  this  sense  again 
that,  while  we  are  certainly  jollier  than  the 
pagans,  and  much  more  right  than  the  pagans, 
there  is  not  one  of  us  who  can,  by  the  utmost 
stretch  of  energy,  be  so  sensible  as  the  pagans. 
That  naked  innocence  of  the  intellect  cannot 
be  recovered  by  any  man  after  Christianity; 
and  for  this  excellent  reason,  that  every  man 
after  Christianity  knows  it  to  be  misleading. 
Let  me  take  an  example,  the  first  that  occurs  to 
the  mind,  of  this  impossible  plainness  in  the 
pagan  point  of  view.  The  greatest  tribute  to 
Christianity  in  the  modem  world  is  Tennyson's 
'*  Ulysses."  The  poet  reads  into  the  story  of 
Ulysses  the  conception  of  an  incurable  desire  to 
wander.  But  the  real  Ulysses  does  not  desire 
to  wander  at  all.  He  desires  to  get  home.  He 
displays  his  heroic  and  unconquerable  qualities 
in  resisting  the  misfortunes  which  baulk  him; 

i6o 


Paganism  and  Mr,  Lowes  Dickinson 

but  that  is  all.  There  is  no  love  of  adventure 
for  its  own  sake;  that  is  a  Christian  product. 
There  is  no  love  of  Penelope  for  her  own  sake; 
that  is  a  Christian  product.  Everything  in  that 
old  world  would  appear  to  have  been  clean  and 
obvious.  A  good  man  was  a  good  man;  a  bad 
man  was  a  bad  man.  For  this  reason  they  had 
no  charity;  for  charity  is  a  reverent  agnosticism 
towards  the  complexity  of  the  soul.  For  this 
reason  they  had  no  such  thing  as  the  art  of 
fiction,  the  novel;  for  the  novel  is  a  creation  of 
the  mystical  idea  of  charity.  For  them  a  pleas- 
ant landscape  was  pleasant,  and  an  unpleasant 
landscape  unpleasant.  Hence  they  had  no  idea 
of  romance;  for  romance  consists  in  thinking 
a  thing  more  delightful  because  it  is  dangerous; 
it  is  a  Christian  idea.  In  a  word,  we  cannot 
reconstruct  or  even  imagine  the  beautiful  and 
astonishing  pagan  world.  It  was  a  world  in 
which  common  sense  was  really  common. 

My  general  meaning  touching  the  three 
virtues  of  which  I  have  spoken  will  now,  I 
hope,  be  sufficiently  clear.  They  are  all  three 
paradoxical,  they  are  all  three  practical,  and 
they  are  all  three  paradoxical  because  they  are 
practical.  It  is  the  stress  of  ultimate  need,  and 
a  terrible  knowledge  of  things  as  they  are,  which 
led  men  to  set  up  these  riddles,  and  to  die  for 

i6z 


V 


Heretics 


them.  Whatever  may  be  the  meaning  of  the 
contradiction,  it  is  the  fact  that  the  only  kind  of 
hope  that  is  of  any  use  in  a  battle  is  a  hope  that 
denies  arithmetic.  Whatever  may  be  the  mean- 
ing of  the  contradiction,  it  is  the  fact  that  the 
only  kind  of  charity  which  any  weak  spirit  wants, 
or  which  any  generous  spirit  feels,  is  the  charity 
which  forgives  the  sins  that  are  like  scarlet. 
Whatever  may  be  the  meaning  of  faith,  it  must 
always  mean  a  certainty  about  something  we 
cannot  prove.  Thus,  for  instance,  we  believe 
by  faith  in  the  existence  of  other  people. 

But  there  is  another  Christian  virtue,  a  virtue 
far  more  obviously  and  historically  connected 
with  Christianity,  which  will  illustrate  even 
better  the  connection  between  paradox  and 
practical  necessity.  This  virtue  cannot  be 
questioned  in  its  capacity  as  a  historical  symbol ; 
certainly  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  will  not  ques- 
tion it.  It  has  been  the  boast  of  hundreds  of 
the  champions  of  Christianity.  It  has  been  the 
taunt  of  hundreds  of  the  opponents  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  is,  in  essence,  the  basis  of  Mr. 
Lowes  Dickinson's  whole  distinction  between 
Christianity  and  Paganism.  I  mean,  of  course, 
the  virtue  of  humility.  I  admit,  of  course,  most 
readily,  that  a  great  deal  of  false  Eastern  hu- 
mility (that  is,  of  strictly  ascetic  humility)  mixed 

163 


Paganism  and  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson 

itself  with  the  main  stream  of  European  Chris- 
tianity. We  must  not  forget  that  when  we 
speak  of  Christianity  we  are  speaking  of  a 
whole  continent  for  about  a  thousand  years. 
But  of  this  virtue  even  more  than  of  the  other 
three,  I  would  maintain  the  general  proposition 
adopted  above.  Civilization  discovered  Chris- 
tian humility  for  the  same  urgent  reason  that 
it  discovered  faith  and  charity  —  that  is,  be- 
cause Christian  civilization  had  to  discover  it 
or  die. 

The  great  psychological  discovery  of  Pagan- 
ism, which  turned  it  into  Christianity,  can  be 
expressed  with  some  accuracy  in  one  phrase. 
The  pagan  set  out,  with  admirable  sense,  to 
enjoy  himself.  By  the  end  of  his  civilization 
he  had  discovered  that  a  man  cannot  enjoy 
himself  and  continue  to  enjoy  anything  else. 
Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  has  pointed  out  in  words 
too  excellent  to  need  any  further  elucidation, 
the  absurd  shallowness  of  those  who  imagine 
that  the  pagan  enjoyed  himself  only  in  a  ma- 
terialistic sense.  Of  course,  he  enjoyed  himself, 
not  only  intellectually  even,  he  enjoyed  himself 
morally,  he  enjoyed  himself  spiritually.  But  it 
was  himself  that  he  was  enjoying;  on  the  face 
of  it,  a  very  natural  thing  to  do.  Now,  the 
psychological   discovery   is   merely   this,    that 

163 


Heretics 


whereas  it  had  been  supposed  that  the  fullest 
possible  enjoyment  is  to  be  found  by  extending 
our  ego  to  infinity,  the  truth  is  that  the  fullest 
possible  enjoyment  is  to  be  found  by  reducing 
our  ego  to  zero. 

Humility  is  the  thing  which  is  for  ever  re- 
newing the  earth  and  the  stars.  It  is  humility, 
and  not  duty,  which  preserves  the  stars  from 
wrong,  from  the  unpardonable  wrong  of  casual 
resignation ;  it  is  through  humility  that  the  most 
ancient  heavens  for  us  are  fresh  and  strong. 
The  curse  that  came  before  history  has  laid  on 
us  all  a  tendency  to  be  weary  of  wonders.  If 
we  saw  the  sun  for  the  first  time  it  would  be 
the  most  fearful  and  beautiful  of  meteors.  Now 
that  we  see  it  for  the  hundredth  time  we  call  it, 
in  the  hideous  and  blasphemous  phrase  of 
Wordsworth,  ^^the  light  of  common  day."  We 
Jre  inclined  to  increase  our  claims.  We  are 
inclined  to  demand  six  suns,  to  demand  a  blue 
sun,  to  demand  a  green  sun.  Humility  is  per- 
petually putting  us  back  in  the  primal  darkness. 
There  all  light  is  lightning,  startling  and  instan- 
taneous. Until  we  understand  that  original 
dark,  in  which  we  have  neither  sight  nor  expec- 
tation, we  can  give  no  hearty  and  chUdlike 
praise  to  the  splendid  sensationalism  of  things. 
The  terms  ^^ pessimism''  and  '* optimism,"  like 

164 


Paganism  and  Mr,  Lowes  Dickinson 

most  modem  terms,  are  unmeaning.  But  if 
they  can  be  used  in  any  vague  sense  as  meaning 
something,  we  may  say  that  in  this  great  fact 
pessimism  is  the  very  basis  of  optimism.  The 
man  who  destroys  himself  creates  the  universe. 
To  the  humble  man,  and  to  the  humble  man 
alone,  the  sun  is  really  a  sun;  to  the  humble 
man,  and  to  the  humble  man  alone,  the  sea  is 
really  a  sea.  When  he  looks  at  all  the  faces  in 
the  street,  he  does  not  only  realize  that  men  are 
alive,  he  realizes  with  a  dramatic  pleasure  that 
they  are  not  dead. 

I  have  not  spoken  of  another  aspect  of  the 
discovery  of  humility  as  a  psychological  neces- 
sity, because  it  is  more  commonly  insisted  on, 
and  is  in  itself  more  obvious.  But  it  is  equally 
clear  that  himiility  is  a  permanent  necessity  as 
a  condition  of  effort  and  self-examination.  It 
is  one  of  the  deadly  fallacies  of  Jingo  politics 
that  a  nation  is  stronger  for  despising  other 
nations.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  strongest 
nations  are  those,  like  Prussia  or  Japan,  which 
began  from  very  mean  beginnings,  but  have  not 
been  too  proud  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  the  foreigner 
and  learn  everything  from  him.  Almost  every 
obvious  and  direct  victory  has  been  the  victory 
of  the  plagiarist.  This  is,  indeed,  only  a  very 
paltry  by-product  of  humility,  but  it  is  a  pro- 

165 


Heretics 


duct  of  humility,  and,  therefore,  it  is  successful. 
Prussia  had  no  Christian  humility  in  its  internal 
arrangements;  hence  its  internal  arrangements 
were  miserable.  But  it  had  enough  Christian 
humility  slavishly  to  copy  France  (even  down 
to  Frederick  the  Great's  poetry),  and  that  which 
it  had  the  humility  to  copy  it  had  ultimately  the 
honour  to  conquer.  The  case  of  the  Japanese 
is  even  more  obvious;  their  only  Christian  and 
their  only  beautiful  quality  is  that  they  have 
humbled  themselves  to  be  exalted.  All  this 
aspect  of  humility,  however,  as  connected  with 
the  matter  of  effort  and  striving  for  a  standard 
set  above  us,  I  dismiss  as  having  been  suffi- 
ciently pointed  out  by  almost  all  idealistic 
writers. 

It  may  be  worth  while,  however,  to  point 
out  the  interesting  disparity  in  the  matter  of 
humility  between  the  modem  notion  of  the 
strong  man  and  the  actual  records  of  strong 
men.  Carlyle  objected  to  the  statement  that 
no  man  could  be  a  hero  to  his  valet.  Every 
sympathy  can  be  extended  towards  him  in  the 
matter  if  he  merely  or  mainly  meant  that  the 
phrase  was  a  disparagement  of  hero-worship. 
Hero-worship  is  certainly  a  generous  and  human 
impulse;  the  hero  may  be  faulty,  but  the  wor- 
ship can  hardly  be.    It  may  be  that  no  man 

i66 


Paganism  and  Mr,  Lowes  Dickinson 

would  be  a  hero  to  his  valet.  But  any  man 
would  be  a  valet  to  his  hero.  But  in  truth  both 
the  proverb  itself  and  Carlyle's  stricture  upon 
it  ignore  the  most  essential  matter  at  issue. 
The  ultimate  psychological  truth  is  not  that  no 
man  is  a  hero  to  his  valet.  The  ultimate 
psychological  truth,  the  foundation  of  Chris- 
tianity, is  that  no  man  is  a  hero  to  himself. 
Cromwell,  according  to  Carlyle,  was  a  strong 
man.  According  to  Cromwell,  he  was  a  weak 
one. 

The  weak  point  in  the  whole  of  Carlyle's 
case  for  aristocracy  lies,  indeed,  in  his  most 
celebrated  phrase.  Carlyle  said  that  men  were 
mostly  fools.  Christianity,  with  a  surer  and 
more  reverent  realism,  says  that  they  are  all 
fools.  This  doctrine  is  sometimes  called  the 
doctrine  of  original  sin.  It  may  also  be  de- 
scribed as  the  doctrine  of  the  equality  of  men. 
But  the  essential  point  of  it  is  merely  this,  that 
whatever  primary  and  far-reaching  moral  dan- 
gers affect  any  man,  affect  all  men.  All  men 
can  be  criminals,  if  tempted;  all  men  can  be 
heroes,  if  inspired.  And  this  doctrine  does 
away  altogether  with  Carlyle's  pathetic  belief 
(or  any  one  else's  pathetic  belief)  in  "the  wise 
few."  There  are  no  wise  few.  Every  aris- 
tocracy that  has  ever  existed  has  behaved,  in  all 

167 


Heretics 


essential  points,  exactly  like  a  small  mob.  Every 
oligarchy  is  merely  a  knot  of  men  in  the  street  — 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  very  jolly,  but  not  infallible. 
And  no  oligarchies  in  the  world's  history  have 
ever  come  off  so  badly  in  practical  affairs  as 
the  very  proud  oligarchies  —  the  oligarchy  of 
Poland,  the  oligarchy  of  Venice.  And  the 
armies  that  have  most  swiftly  and  suddenly 
broken  their  enemies  in  pieces  have  been  the 
religious  armies  —  the  Moslem  Armies,  for  in- 
stance, or  the  Puritan  Armies.  And  a  religious 
army  may,  by  its  nature,  be  defined  as  an  army 
in  which  every  man  is  taught  not  to  exalt  but 
to  abase  himself.  Many  modem  Englishmen 
talk  of  themselves  as  the  sturdy  descendants  of 
their  sturdy  Puritan  fathers.  As  a  fact,  they 
would  run  away  from  a  cow.  If  you  asked  one 
of  their  Puritan  fathers,  if  you  asked  Bunyan, 
for  instance,  whether  he  was  sturdy,  he  would 
have  answered,  with  tears,  that  he  was  as  weak 
as  water.  And  because  of  this  he  would  have 
borne  tortures.  And  this  virtue  of  humility, 
while  being  practical  enough  to  win  battles, 
will  always  be  paradoxical  enough  to  puzzle 
pedants.  It  is  at  one  with  the  virtue  of  charity 
in  this  respect.  Every  generous  person  will 
admit  that  the  one  kind  of  sin  which  charity 
should  cover  is  the  sin  which  is  inexcusable. 

i68 


Paganism  and  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson 

And  every  generous  person  will  equally  agree 
that  the  one  kind  of  pride  which  is  wholly 
damnable  is  the  pride  of  the  man  who  has 
something  to  be  proud  of.  The  pride  which, 
proportionally  speaking,  does  not  hurt  the  char- 
acter, is  the  pride  in  things  which  reflect  no 
credit  on  the  person  at  all.  Thus  it  does  a 
man  no  harm  to  be  proud  of  his  country,  and 
comparatively  little  harm  to  be  proud  of  his 
remote  ancestors.  It  does  him  more  harm  to 
be  proud  of  having  made  money,  because  in 
that  he  has  a  little  more  reason  for  pride.  It 
does  him  more  harm  still  to  be  proud  of  what 
is  nobler  than  money  —  intellect.  And  it  does 
him  most  harm  of  all  to  value  himself  for  the 
most  valuable  thing  on  earth  —  goodness.  The 
man  who  is  proud  of  what  is  really  creditable 
to  him  is  the  Pharisee,  the  man  whom  Christ 
Himself  could  not  forbear  to  strike. 

My  objection  to  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  and 
the  reassertors  of  the  pagan  ideal  is,  then,  this. 
I  accuse  them  of  ignoring  definite  human  dis- 
coveries in  the  moral  world,  discoveries  as  defi- 
nite, though  not  as  material,  as  the  discovery 
of  the  circulation  of  the  blood.  We  cannot 
go  back  to  an  ideal  of  reason  and  sanity.  For 
mankind  has  discovered  that  reason  does  not 
lead  to  sanity.    We  cannot  go  back  to  an  ideal 

169 


Heretics 


of  pride  and  enjoyment.  For  mankind  has 
discovered  that  pride  does  not  lead  to  enjoy- 
ment. I  do  not  know  by  what  extraordinary 
mental  accident  modem  writers  so  constantly 
connect  the  idea  of  progress  with  the  idea  of 
independent  thinking.  Progress  is  obviously 
the  antithesis  of  independent  thinking.  For 
under  independent  or  individualistic  thinking, 
every  man  starts  at  the  beginning,  and  goes,  in 
all  probability,  just  as  far  as  his  father  before 
him.  But  if  there  really  be  anything  of  the 
nature  of  progress,  it  must  mean,  above  all 
things,  the  careful  study  and  assumption  of  the 
whole  of  the  past.  I  accuse  Mr.  Lowes  Dickin- 
son and  his  school  of  reaction  in  the  only  real 
sense.  If  he  likes,  let  him  ignore  these  great 
historic  mysteries  —  the  mystery  of  charity,  the 
mystery  of  chivalry,  the  mystery  of  faith.  If 
he  likes,  let  him  ignore  the  plough  or  the 
printing-press.  But  if  we  do  revive  and  pursue 
the  pagan  ideal  of  a  simple  and  rational  self- 
completion  we  shall  end  —  where  Paganism 
ended.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  shall  end  in 
destruction.  I  mean  that  we  shall  end  in 
Christianity. 


X90 


XIII  —  Celts  and  Celtophiles 

SCIENCE  in  the  modern  world  has  many 
uses;  its  chief  use,  however,  is  to  pro- 
vide long  words  to  cover  the  errors  of 
the  rich.  The  word  "kleptomania"  is 
a  vulgar  example  of  what  I  mean.  It  is  on  a 
par  with  that  strange  theory,  always  advanced 
when  a  wealthy  or  prominent  person  is  in  the 
dock,  that  exposure  is  more  of  a  punishment 
for  the  rich  than  for  the  poor.  Of  course,  the 
very  reverse  is  the  truth.  Exposure  is  more  of 
a  punishment  for  the  poor  than  for  the  rich. 
The  richer  a  man  is  the  easier  it  is  for  him  to  be 
a  tramp.  The  richer  a  man  is  the  easier  it  is 
for  him  to  be  popular  and  generally  respected 
in  the  Cannibal  Islands.  But  the  poorer  a  man 
is  the  more  likely  it  is  that  he  will  have  to  use 
his  past  life  whenever  he  wants  to  get  a  bed  for 
the  night.  Honour  is  a  luxury  for  aristocrats, 
but  it  is  u  necessity  for  hall-porters.  This  is  a 
secondary  matter,  but  it  is  an  example  of  the 
general  proposition  I  offer  —  the  proposition 
that  an  enormous  amount  of  modem  ingenuity 
is  expended  on  finding  defences  for  the  inde- 
fensible conduct  of  the  powerful.    As  I  have 

171 


Heretics 


said  above,  these  defences  generally  exhibit 
themselves  most  emphatically  in  the  form  of 
appeals  to  physical  science.  And  of  all  the 
forms  in  which  science,  or  pseudo-science,  has 
come  to  the  rescue  of  the  rich  and  stupid,  there 
is  none  so  singular  as  the  singular  invention  of 
the  theory  of  races. 

When  a  wealthy  nation  like  the  English  dis- 
covers the  perfectly  patent  fact  that  it  is  making 
a  ludicrous  mess  of  the  government  of  a  poorer 
nation  like  the  Irish,  it  pauses  for  a  moment  in 
consternation,  and  then  begins  to  talk  about 
Celts  and  Teutons.  As  far  as  I  can  understand 
the  theory,  the  Irish  are  Celts  and  the  English 
are  Teutons.  Of  course,  the  Irish  are  not  Celts 
any  more  than  the  English  are  Teutons.  I 
have  not  followed  the  ethnological  discussion 
with  much  energy,  but  the  last  scientific  con- 
clusion which  I  read  inclined  on  the  whole  to 
the  summary  that  the  English  were  mainly 
Celtic  and  the  Irish  mainly  Teutonic.  But  no 
man  alive,  with  even  the  glimmering  of  a  real 
scientific  sense,  would  ever  dream  of  applying 
the  terms  ''Celtic"  or  ''Teutonic''  to  either  of 
them  in  any  positive  or  useful  sense. 

That  sort  of  thing  must  be  left  to  people  who 
talk  about  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  and  extend 
the  expression  to  America.     How  much  of  the 

172 


Celts  and  Celtophiles 


blood  of  the  Angles  and  Saxons  (whoever  they 
were)  there  remains  in  our  mixed  British,  Ro- 
man, German,  Dane,  Norman,  and  Picard 
stock  is  a  matter  only  interesting  to  wild  anti- 
quaries. And  how  much  of  that  diluted  blood 
can  possibly  remain  in  that  roaring  whirlpool 
of  America  into  which  a  cataract  of  Swedes, 
Jews,  Germans,  Irishmen,  and  Italians  is  per- 
petually pouring,  is  a  matter  only  interesting 
to  lunatics.  It  would  have  been  wiser  for  the 
English  governing  class  to  have  called  upon 
some  other  god.  All  other  gods,  however  weak 
and  warring,  at  least  boast  of  being  constant. 
But  science  boasts  of  being  in  a  flux  for  ever; 
boasts  of  being  unstable  as  water. 

And  England  and  the  English  governing 
class  never  did  call  on  this  absurd  deity  of  race 
until  it  seemed,  for  an  instant,  that  they  had 
no  other  god  to  call  on.  All  the  most  genuine 
Englishmen  in  history  would  have  yawned  or 
laughed  in  your  face  if  you  had  begun  to  talk 
about  Anglo-Saxons.  If  you  had  attempted  to 
substitute  the  ideal  of  race  for  the  ideal  of 
nationality,  I  really  do  not  like  to  think  what 
they  would  have  said.  I  certainly  should  not 
like  to  have  been  the  officer  of  Nelson  who 
suddenly  discovered  his  French  blood  on  the 
eve  of  Trafalgar.    I  should  not  like  to  have 

173 


Heretics 


been  the  Norfolk  or  Suffolk  gentleman  who 
had  to  expound  to  Admiral  Blake  by  what 
demonstrable  ties  of  genealogy  he  was  irrevoc- 
ably bound  to  the  Dutch  The  truth  of  the 
whole  T^rtter  is  very  sin} pie.  Nationality  ex- 
ists, and  has  nothing  in  the  world  to  do  with 
race  Nationality  is  a  thing  like  a  church  or  a 
o^cret  society;  it  is  a  product  of  the  human  soul 
and  will;  it  is  a  spiritual  product.  And  there 
are  men  in  the  modern  world  who  would  think 
anything  and  do  anything  rather  than  admit 
that  anything  could  be  a  spiritual  product, 

A  nation,  however,  as  it  confronts  the  modern 

vorld,   is  a  p^irely  spiritual  product.     Some- 

imes  it  has  been  born  in  independence,  like 

>cotland.     Sometimes    it    has    been    bom    in 

lependence,  in  subjugation,  like  Ireland.  Some- 

imes  it  is  a  large  thing  cohering  out  of  many 

smaller  things,  like  Italy.     Sometimes  it  is  a 

small  thing  breaking  away  from  larger  things, 

like  Poland.    But  in  each  and  every  case  its 

quality  is  purely  spiritual,  or,  if  you  will,  purely 

psychological.     It  is  a  moment  when  five  men 

become  a  sixth  man.    Every  one  knows  it  who 

has  ever  founded  a  club.    It  is  a  moment  when 

five  places  become  one  place.     Every  one  must 

know  it  who  has  ever  had  to  repel  an  invasion. 

Mr.  Timothy  Healy,  the  most  serious  intellect 

174 


Celts  and  Celtophiles 


in  the  present  House  of  Commons,  summed  up 
nationality  to  perfection  when  he  simply  called 
it  something  for  which  people  will  die.  As  he 
excellently  said  in  reply  to  Lord  Hugh  Cecil, 
**No  one,  not  even  the  noble  lord,  would  die  for 
the  meridian  of  Greenwich."  And  that  is  the 
great  tribute  to  its  purely  psychological  char- 
acter. It  is  idle  to  ask  why  Greenwich  should 
not  cohere  in  this  spiritual  manner  while  Athens 
or  Sparta  did.  It  is  like  asking  why  a  man 
falls  in  love  with  one  woman  and  not  with 
another. 

Now,  of  this  great  spiritual  coherence,  in- 
dependent of  external  circumstances,  or  of  race, 
or  of  any  obvious  physical  thing,  Ireland  is  the 
most  remarkable  example.  Rome  conquered 
nations,  but  Ireland  has  conquered  races.  The 
Norman  has  gone  there  and  become  Irish,  the 
Scotchman  has  gone  there  and  become  Irish, 
the  Spaniard  has  gone  there  and  become  Irish, 
even  the  bitter  soldier  of  Cromwell  has  gone 
there  and  become  Irish.  Ireland,  which  did 
not  exist  even  politically,  has  been  stronger  than 
all  the  races  that  existed  scientifically.  The 
purest  Germanic  blood,  the  purest  Norman 
blood,  the  purest  blood  of  the  passionate  Scotch 
patriot,  has  not  been  so  attractive  as  a  nation 
without  a  flag.    Ireland,  unrecognized  and  op- 

^75 


Heretics 


pressed,  has  easily  absorbed  races,  as  such  trifles 
are  easily  absorbed.  She  has  easily  disposed  of 
physical  science,  as  such  superstitions  are  easily 
disposed  of.  Nationality  in  its  weakness  has 
been  stronger  than  ethnology  in  its  strength. 
Five  triumphant  races  have  been  absorbed, 
have  been  defeated  by  a  defeated  nationality. 

This  being  the  true  and  strange  glory  of 
Ireland,  it  is  impossible  to  hear  without  im- 
patience of  the  attempt  so  constantly  made 
among  her  modem  sympathizers  to  talk  about 
Celts  and  Celticism.  Who  were  the  Celts? 
I  defy  anybody  to  say.  Who  are  the  Irish  ?  I 
defy  any  one  to  be  indifferent,  or  to  pretend  not 
to  know.  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats,  the  great  Irish 
genius  who  has  appeared  in  our  time,  shows 
his  own  admirable  penetration  in  discarding 
altogether  the  argument  from  a  Celtic  race. 
But  he  does  not  wholly  escape,  and  his  followers 
hardly  ever  escape,  the  general  objection  to  the 
Celtic  argument.  The  tendency  of  that  argu- 
ment is  to  represent  the  Irish  or  the  Celts  as 
a  strange  and  separate  race,  as  a  tribe  of  eccen- 
trics in  the  modem  world  immersed  in  dim 
legends  and  fmitless  dreams.  Its  tendency  is 
to  exhibit  the  Irish  as  odd,  because  they  see  the 
fairies.  Its  trend  is  to  make  the  Irish  seem 
weird  and  wild  because  they  sing  old  songs  and 

176 


Celts  and  C eltophiles 


k 


join  in  strange  dances.  But  this  is  quite  an 
error;  indeed,  it  is  the  opposite  of  the  truth. 
It  is  the  EngHsh  who  are  odd  because  they  do 
not  see  the  fairies.  It  is  the  inhabitants  of 
Kensington  who  are  weird  and  wild  because 
they  do  not  sing  old  songs  and  join  in  strange 
dances.  In  all  this  the  Irish  are  not  in  the 
least  strange  and  separate,  are  not  in  the  least 
Celtic,  as  the  word  is  commonly  and  popularly 
used.  In  all  this  the  Irish  are  simply  an  ordi- 
nary sensible  nation,  living  the  life  of  any  other 
ordinary  and  sensible  nation  which  has  not 
been  either  sodden  with  smoke  or  oppressed 
by  money-lenders,  or  otherwise  corrupted  with 
wealth  and  science.  There  is  nothing  Celtic 
about  having  legends.  It  is  merely  human. 
The  Germans,  who  are  (I  suppose)  Teutonic, 
have  hundreds  of  legends,  wherever  it  happens 
that  the  Germans  are  human.  There  is  nothing 
Celtic  about  loving  poetry;  the  English  loved 
poetry  more,  perhaps,  than  any  other  people 
before  they  came  under  the  shadow  of  the 
chimney-pot  and  the  shadow  of  the  chimney- 
pot hat.  It  is  not  Ireland  which  is  mad  and 
mystic;  it  is  Manchester  which  is  mad  and 
mystic,  which  is  incredible,  which  is  a  wild 
exception  among  human  things.  Ireland  has 
no  need  to  play  the  silly  game  of  the  science 

177 


Heretics 


of  races;  Ireland  has  no  need  to  pretend  to  be 
a  tribe  of  visionaries  apart.  In  the  matter  of 
visions,  Ireland  is  more  than  a  nation,  it  is  a 
model  nation. 


178 


XIV  —  On  Certain  Modem  Writers  and  the 
Institution  of  the  Family 

THE  family  may  fairly  be  considered, 
one  would  think,  an  ultimate  human 
institution.  Every  one  would  admit 
that  it  has  been  the  main  cell  and 
central  unit  of  almost  all  societies  hitherto, 
except,  indeed,  such  societies  as  that  of  Lace- 
daemon,  which  went  in  for  "efficiency,"  and  has, 
therefore,  perished,  and  left  not  a  trace  behind. 
Christianity,  even  enormous  as  was  its  revolu- 
tion, did  not  alter  this  ancient  and  savage 
sanctity;  it  merely  reversed  it.  It  did  not  deny 
the  trinity  of  father,  mother,  and  child.  It 
merely  read  it  backwards,  making  it  run  child, 
mother,  father.  This  it  called,  not  the  family, 
but  the  Holy  Family,  for  many  things  are  made 
holy  by  being  turned  upside  down.  But  some 
sages  of  our  own  decadence  ha\  e  made  a  serious 
attack  on  the  family.  They  have  impugned  it, 
as  I  think  wrongly;  and  its  defenders  have  de- 
fended it,  and  defended  it  wrongly.  The  com- 
mon defence  of  the  family  is  that,  amid  the 
stress  and  fickleness  of  life,  it  is  peaceful, 
pleasant,  and  at  one.    But  there  is  another 

179 


Heretics 


defence  of  the  family  which  is  possible,  and 
to  me  evident;  this  defence  is  that  the  family  is 
not  peaceful  and  not  pleasant  and  not  at  one. 

It  is  not  fashionable  to  say  much  nowadays 
of  the  advantages  of  the  small  community. 
We  are  told  that  we  must  go  in  for  large  empires 
and  large  ideas.  There  is  one  advantage,  how- 
ever, in  the  small  state,  the  city,  or  the  village, 
which  only  the  wilfully  blind  can  overlook. 
The  man  who  lives  in  a  small  community  lives 
in  a  much  larger  world.  He  knows  much  more 
of  the  fierce  varieties  and  uncompromising  di- 
vergences of  men.  The  reason  is  obvious.  In 
a  large  community  we  can  choose  our  com- 
panions. In  a  small  community  our  compan- 
ions are  chosen  for  us.  Thus  in  all  extensive 
and  highly  civilized  societies  groups  come  into 
existence  founded  upon  what  is  called  sympathy, 
and  shut  out  the  real  world  more  sharply  than 
the  gates  of  a  monastery.  There  is  nothing 
really  narrow  about  the  clan;  the  thing  which 
is  really  narrc  w  is  the  clique.  The  men  of  the 
clan  live  together  because  they  all  wear  the 
same  tartan  or  are  all  descended  from  the  same 
sacred  cow;  but  in  their  souls,  by  the  divine 
luck  of  things,  there  will  always  be  more  colours 
than  in  any  tartan.  But  the  men  of  the  clique 
live  together  because  they  have  the  some  kind 

i8o 


On  the  Institution  of  the  Family 

of  soul,  and  their  narrowness  is  a  narrowness  of 
spiritual  coherence  and  contentment,  like  that 
which  exists  in  hell.  A  big  society  e:^ists  in 
order  to  form  cliques.  A  big  society  is  a  society 
for  the  promotion  of  narrowness.  It  is  a  ma- 
chinery for  the  purpose  of  guarding  the  solitary 
and  sensitive  individual  from  all  experience  of 
the  bitter  and  bracing  human  compromises. 
It  is,  in  the  most  literal  sense  of  the  words,  a  so- 
ciety for  the  prevention  of  Christian  knowledge. 
We  can  see  this  change,  for  instance,  in  the 
modern  transformation  of  the  thing  called  a 
club.  When  London  was  smaller,  and  the  parts 
of  London  more  self-contained  and  parochial, 
the  club  was  what  it  still  is  in  villages,  the 
opposite  of  what  it  is  now  in  great  cities.  Then 
the  club  was  valued  as  a  place  where  a  man 
could  be  sociable.  Now  the  club  is  valued  as  a 
place  where  a  man  can  be  unsociable.  The 
more  the  enlargement  and  elaboration  of  our 
civilization  goes  on  the  more  the  club  ceases  to 
be  a  place  where  a  man  can  have  a  noisy  argu- 
ment, and  becomes  more  and  more  a  place 
where  a  man  can  have  what  is  somewhat  fan- 
tastically called  a  quiet  chop.  Its  aim  is  to 
make  a  man  comfortable,  and  to  make  a  man 
comfortable  is  to  make  him  the  opposite  of 
sociable.    Sociability,  like  all  good  things,  is 

i8i 


Heretics 


full  of  discomforts,  dangers,  and  renunciations. 
The  club  tends  to  produce  the  most  degraded 
of  all  combinations  —  the  luxurious  anchorite, 
the  man  who  combines  the  self-indulgence  of 
LucuUus  with  the  insane  loneliness  of  St. 
Simeon  Stylites. 

If  we  were  to-morrow  morning  snowed  up 
in  the  street  in  which  we  live,  we  should  step 
suddenly  into  a  much  larger  and  much  wilder 
world  than  we  have  ever  known.  And  it  is 
the  whole  effort  of  the  typically  modern  person 
to  escape  from  the  street  in  which  he  lives. 
First  he  invents  modem  hygiene  and  goes  to 
Margate.  Then  he  invents  modem  culture  and 
goes  to  Florence.  Then  he  invents  modern 
imperialism  and  goes  to  Timbuctoo.  He  goes 
to  the  fantastic  borders  of  the  earth.  He  pre- 
tends to  shoot  tigers.  He  almost  rides  on  a 
camel.  And  in  all  this  he  is  still  essentially 
fleeing  from  the  street  in  which  he  was  bom; 
and  of  this  flight  he  is  always  ready  with  his 
own  explanation.  He  says  he  is  fleeing  from 
his  street  because  it  is  dull;  he  is  lying.  He  is 
really  fleeing  from  his  street  because  it  is  a 
great  deal  too  exciting.  It  is  exciting  because 
it  is  exacting;  it  is  exacting  because  it  is  alive. 
He  can  visit  Venice  because  to  him  the  Vene- 
tians^ are  only  Venetians;  the  people  in  his  own 

182 


On  the  Institution  ^f  the  Family 

street  are  men.  He  can  stare  at  the  Chinese 
because  for  him  the  Chinese  are  a  passive  thing 
to  be  stared  at;  if  he  stares  at  the  old  lady  in 
the  next  garden,  she  becomes  active.  He  is 
forced  to  flee,  in  short,  from  the  too  stimulating 
society  of  his  equals  —  of  free  men,  perverse, 
personal,  deliberately  different  from  himself. 
The  street  in  Brixton  is  too  glowing  and  over- 
powering. He  has  to  soothe  and  quiet  himself 
among  tigers  and  vultures,  camels  and  croco- 
diles. These  creatures  are  indeed  very  different 
from  himself.  But  they  do  not  put  their  shape 
or  colour  or  custom  into  a  decisive  intellectual 
competition  with  his  own.  They  do  not  seek 
to  destroy  his  principles  and  assert  their  own; 
the  stranger  monsters  of  the  suburban  street  do 
seek  to  do  this.  The  camel  does  not  contort 
his  features  into  a  fine  sneer  because  Mr. 
Robinson  has  not  got  a  hump;  the  cultured 
gentleman  at  No.  5  does  exhibit  a  sneer  because 
Robinson  has  not  got  a  dado.  The  vulture 
will  not  roar  with  laughter  because  a  man  does 
not  fly;  but  the  major  at  No.  9  will  roar  with 
laughter  because  a  man  does  not  smoke.  The 
complaint  we  commonly  have  to  make  of  our 
neighbours  is  that  they  will  not,  as  we  express 
it,  mind  their  own  business.  We  do  not  really 
mean  that  they  will  not  mind  their  own  business. 

183 


Heretics 


If  our  neighbours  did  not  mind  their  own  busi- 
ness they  would  be  asked  abruptly  for  their  rent, 
and  would  rapidly  cease  to  be  our  neighbours. 
What  we  really  mean  when  we  say  that  they 
cannot  mind  their  own  business  is  something 
much  deeper.  We  do  not  dislike  them  because 
they  have  so  little  force  and  fire  that  they  cannot 
be  interested  in  themselves.  We  dislike  them 
because  they  have  so  much  force  and  fire  that 
they  can  be  interested  in  us  as  well.  What  we 
dread  about  our  neighbours,  in  short,  is  not  the 
narrowness  of  their  horizon,  but  their  superb 
tendency  to  broaden  it.  And  all  aversions  to 
ordinary  humanity  have  this  general  character. 
They  are  not  aversions  to  its  feebleness  (as  is 
pretended),  but  to  its  energy.  The  misan- 
thropes pretend  that  they  despise  humanity  for 
its  weakness.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  hate 
it  for  its  strength. 

Of  course,  this  shrinking  from  the  brutal 
vivacity  and  brutal  variety  of  common  men  is  a 
perfectly  reasonable  and  excusable  thing  as  long 
as  it  does  not  pretend  to  any  point  of  supe- 
riority. It  is  when  it  calls  itself  aristocracy  or 
aestheticism  or  a  superiority  to  the  bourgeoisie 
that  its  inherent  weakness  has  in  justice  to  be 
pointed  out.  Fastidiousness  is  the  most  par- 
donable of  vices;  but  it  is  the  most  unpardonable 

184 


On  the  Institution  of  the  Family 

of  virtues.  Nietzsche,  who  represents  most 
prominently  this  pretentious  claim  of  the  fas- 
tidious, has  a  description  somewhere  —  a  very 
powerful  description  in  the  purely  literary  sense 
—  of  the  disgust  and  disdain  which  consume 
him  at  the  sight  of  the  common  people  with 
their  common  faces,  their  common  voices,  and 
their  common  minds.  As  I  have  said,  this 
attitude  is  almost  beautiful  if  we  may  regard  it 
as  pathetic.  Nietzsche's  aristocracy  has  about 
it  all  the  sacredness  that  belongs  to  the  weak. 
When  he  makes  us  feel  that  he  cannot  endure 
the  innumerable  faces,  the  incessant  voices,  the 
overpowering  omnipresence  which  belongs  to 
the  mob,  he  will  have  the  sympathy  of  anybody 
who  has  ever  been  sick  on  a  steamer  or  tired  in 
a  crowded  omnibus.  Every  man  has  hated 
mankind  when  he  was  less  than  a  man.  Every 
man  has  had  humanity  in  his  eyes  like  a  blinding 
fog,  humanity  in  his  nostrils  like  a  suffocating 
smell.  But  when  Nietzsche  has  the  incredible 
lack  of  humour  and  lack  of  imagination  to  ask 
us  to  believe  that  his  aristocracy  is  an  aristocracy 
of  strong  muscles  or  an  aristocracy  of  strong 
wills,  it  is  necessary  to  point  out  the  truth.  It 
is  an  aristocracy  of  weak  nerves. 

We  make  our  friends;  we  make  our  enemies; 
but    God    makes    our    next-door    neighbour. 

18$ 


Heretics 


Hence  he  comes  to  us  clad  in  all  the  careless 
terrors  of  nature;  he  is  as  strange  as  the  stars, 
as  reckless  and  indifferent  as  the  rain.  He  is 
Man,  the  most  terrible  of  the  beasts.  That  is 
why  the  old  religions  and  the  old  scriptural 
language  showed  so  sharp  a  wisdom  when  they 
spoke,  not  of  one's  duty  towards  humanity,  but 
one's  duty  towards  one's  neighbour.  The  duty 
towards  humanity  may  often  take  the  form  of 
some  choice  which  is  personal  or  even  pleasur- 
able. That  duty  may  be  a  hobby;  it  may  even 
be  a  dissipation.  We  may  work  in  the  East 
End  because  we  are  peculiarly  fitted  to  work 
in  the  East  End,  or  because  we  think  we  are; 
we  may  fight  for  the  cause  of  international 
peace  because  we  are  very  fond  of  fighting. 
The  most  monstrous  martyrdom,  the  most  re- 
pulsive experience,  may  be  the  result  of  choice 
or  a  kind  of  taste.  We  may  be  so  made  as  to 
be  particularly  fond  of  lunatics  or  specially 
interested  in  leprosy.  We  may  love  negroes 
because  they  are  black  or  German  Socialists 
because  they  are  pedantic.  But  we  have  to 
love  our  neighbour  because  he  is  there  —  a  much 
more  alarming  reason  for  a  much  more  serious 
operation.  He  is  the  sample  of  humanity  which 
is  actually  given  us.    Precisely  because  he  may 

iS6 


On  the  Institution  of  the  Family 

be  anybody  he  is  everybody.  He  is  a  symbol 
because  he  is  an  accident. 
^  Doubtless  men  flee  from  small  environments 
into  lands  that  are  very  deadly.  But  this  is 
natural  enough;  for  they  are  not  fleeing  from 
death.  They  are  fleeing  from  life.  And  this 
principle  applies  to  ring  within  ring  of  the  social 
system  of  humanity.  It  is  perfectly  reasonable 
that  men  should  seek  for  some  particular  variety 
of  the  human  type,  so  long  as  they  are  seeking 
for  that  variety  of  the  human  type,  and  not  for 
mere  human  variety.  It  is  quite  proper  that  a 
British  diplomatist  should  seek  the  society  of 
Japanese  generals,  if  what  he  wants  is  Japanese 
generals.  But  if  what  he  wants  is  people  differ- 
ent from  himself,  he  had  much  better  stop  at 
home  and  discuss  religion  with  the  housemaid. 
It  is  quite  reasonable  that  the  village  genius 
should  come  up  to  conquer  London  if  what  he 
wants  is  to  conquer  London.  But  if  he  wants 
to  conquer  something  fundamentally  and  sym- 
bolically hostile  and  also  very  strong,  he  had 
much  better  remain  where  he  is  and  have  a 
row  with  the  rector.  The  man  in  the  suburban 
street  is  quite  right  if  he  goes  to  Ramsgate  for 
the  sake  of  Ramsgate  —  a  difficult  thing  to 
imagine.  But  if,  as  he  expresses  it,  he  goes  to 
Ramsgate  "for  a  change,"  then  he  would  have 

187 


Heretics 


a  much  more  romantic  and  even  melodramatic 
change  if  he  jumped  over  the  wall  into  his 
neighbour's  garden.  The  consequences  would 
be  bracing  in  a  sense  far  beyond  the  possibilities 
of  Ramsgate  hygiene. 

Now,  exactly  as  this  principle  applies  to 
the  empire,  to  the  nation  within  the  empire,  to  the 
city  within  the  nation,  to  the  street  within  the 
city,  so  it  applies  to  the  home  within  the  street. 
The  institution  of  the  family  is  to  be  com- 
mended for  precisely  the  same  reasons  that  the 
institution  of  the  nation,  or  the  institution  of 
the  city,  are  in  this  matter  to  be  commended. 
It  is  a  good  thing  for  a  man  to  live  in  a  family 
for  the  same  reason  that  it  is  a  good  thing  for 
a  man  to  be  besieged  in  a  city.  It  is  a  good 
thing  for  a  man  to  live  in  a  family  in  the  same 
sense  that  it  is  a  beautiful  and  delightful  thing 
for  a  man  to  be  snowed  up  in  a  street.  They 
all  force  him  to  realize  that  life  is  not  a  thing 
from  outside,  but  a  thing  from  inside.  Above 
all,  they  all  insist  upon  the  fact  that  life,  if  it 
be  a  truly  stimulating  and  fascinating  life,  is  a 
thing  which,  of  its  nature,  exists  in  spite  of 
ourselves.  The  modem  writers  who  have  sug- 
gested, in  a  more  or  less  open  manner,  that  the 
family  is  a  bad  institution,  have  generally  con- 
fined   themselves    to    suggesting,    with   much 

i88 


On  the  Institution  of  the  Family 

sharpness,  bitterness,  or  pathos,  that  perhaps 
the  family  is  not  always  very  congenial.  Of 
course  the  family  is  a  good  institution  because 
it  is  uncongenial.  It  is  wholesome  precisely 
because  it  contains  so  many  divergencies  and 
varieties.  It  is,  as  the  sentimentalists  say,  like 
a  little  kingdom,  and,  like  most  other  little 
kingdoms,  is  generally  in  a  state  of  something 
resembling  anarchy.  It  is  exactly  because  our 
brother  George  is  not  interested  in  our  religious 
difficulties,  but  is  interested  in  the  Trocadero 
Restaurant,  that  the  family  has  some  of  the 
bracing  qualities  of  the  commonwealth.  It  is 
precisely  because  our  uncle  Henry  does  not 
approve  of  the  theatrical  ambitions  of  our  sister 
Sarah  that  the  family  is  like  humanity.  The 
men  and  women  who,  for  good  reasons  and 
bad,  revolt  against  the  family,  are,  for  good 
reasons  and  bad,  simply  revolting  against  man- 
kind. Aunt  Elizabeth  is  unreasonable,  like 
mankind.  Papa  is  excitable,  like  mankind 
Our  youngest  brother  is  mischievous,  like  man- 
kind. Grandpapa  is  stupid,  like  the  world;  he 
is  old,  like  the  world. 

Those  who  wish,  rightly  or  wrongly,  to  step 
out  of  all  this,  do  definitely  wish  to  step  into  a 
narrower  world.  They  are  dismayed  and  ter- 
rified by  the  largeness  and  variety  of  the  family. 

189 


Heretics 


Sarah  wishes  to  find  a  world  wholly  consisting 
of  private  theatricals;  George  wishes  to  think 
the  Trocadero  a  cosmos.  I  do  not  say,  for  a 
moment,  that  the  flight  to  this  narrower  life 
may  not  be  the  right  thing  for  the  individual, 
any  more  than  I  say  the  same  thing  about 
flight  into  a  monastery.  *  But  I  do  say  that 
!  anything  is  bad  and  artificial  which  tends  to 
make  these  people  succumb  to  the  strange  delu- 
sion that  they  are  stepping  into  a  world  which 
is  actually  larger  and  more  varied  than  their 
own.  ^  The  best  way  that  a  man  could  test  his 
readiness  to  encounter  the  common  variety  of 
mankind  would  be  to  climb  down  a  chimney 
into  any  house  at  random,  and  get  on  as  well 
as  possible  with  the  people  inside.  And  that 
is  essentially  what  each  one  of  us  did  on  the 
day  that  he  was  bom. 

This  is,  indeed,  the  sublime  and  special 
romance  of  the  family.  It  is  romantic  because 
it  is  a  toss-up.  It  is  romantic  because  it  is 
everything  that  its  enemies  call  it.  It  is  ro- 
mantic because  it  is  arbitrary.  It  is  romantic 
because  it  is  there.  So  long  as  you  have  groups 
of  men  chosen  rationally,  you  have  some  special 
or  sectarian  atmosphere.  It  is  when  you  have 
groups  of  men  chosen  irrationally  that  you  have 
men.    The   element   of   adventure   begins   to 

190 


On  the  Institution  of  the  Family 

exist;  for  an  adventure  is,  by  its  nature,  a  thing 
that  comes  to  us.  It  is  a  thing  that  chooses  us, 
not  a  thing  that  we  choose.  Falling  in  love  has 
been  often  regarded  as  the  supreme  adventure, 
the  supreme  romantic  accident.  In  so  much  as 
there  is  in  it  something  outside  ourselves,  some- 
thing of  a  sort  of  merry  fatalism,  this  is  very 
true.  Love  does  take  us  and  transfigure  and 
torture  us.  It  does  break  our  hearts  with  an 
unbearable  beauty,  like  the  unbearable  beauty 
of  music.  But  in  so  far  as  we  have  certainly 
something  to  do  with  the  matter;  in  so  far  as 
we  are  in  some  sense  prepared  to  fall  in  love 
and  in  some  sense  jump  into  it ;  in  so  far  as  we 
do  to  some  extent  choose  and  to  some  extent 
even  judge  —  in  all  this  falling  in  love  is  not 
truly  romantic,  is  not  truly  adventurous  at  all. 
In  this  degree  the  supreme  adventure  is  not 
falling  in  love.  The  supreme  adventure  is 
being  bom.  There  we  do  walk  suddenly  into 
a  splendid  and  startling  trap.  There  we  do  see 
something  of  which  we  have  not  dreamed  before. 
Our  father  and  mother  do  lie  in  wait  for  us 
and  leap  out  on  us,  like  brigands  from  a  bush. 
Our  uncle  is  a  surprise.  Oux  aunt  is,  in  the 
beautiful  common  expression,  a  bolt  from  the 
blue.  When  we  step  into  the  family,  by  the  act 
of  being  bom,  we  do  step  into  a  world  which 

191 


Heretics 


is  incalculable,  into  a  world  which  has  its  own 
strange  laws,  into  a  world  which  could  do  with- 
out us,  into  a  world  that  we  have  not  made. 
In  other  words,  when  we  step  into  the  family 
we  step  into  a  fairy-tale. 

This  colour  as  of  a  fantastic  narrative  ought 
to  cling  to  the  family  and  to  our  relations  with 
it  throughout  life.  Romance  is  the  deepest 
thing  in  life;  romance  is  deeper  even  than 
reality.  For  even  if  reality  could  be  proved  to 
be  misleading,  it  still  could  not  be  proved  to 
be  unimportant  or  unimpressive.  Even  if  the 
facts  are  false,  they  are  still  very  strange.  And 
this  strangeness  of  life,  this  unexpected  and 
even  perverse  element  of  things  as  they  fall 
out,  remains  incurably  interesting.  The  cir- 
cumstances we  can  regulate  may  become  tame 
or  pessimistic;  but  the  ^^circumstances  over 
which  we  have  no  control"  remara  god-like  to 
those  who,  like  Mr.  Micawber,  can  call  on 
them  and  renew  their  strength.  People  wonder 
why  the  novel  is  the  most  popular  form  of 
literature;  people  wonder  why  it  is  read  more 
than  books  of  science  or  books  of  metaphysics. 
The  reason  is  very  simple;  it  is  merely  that 
the  novel  is  more  true  than  they  are.  Life 
may  sometimes  legitimately  appear  as  a  book 
of  science.    Life  may  sometimes  appear,  and 

192 


On  the  Institution  of  the  Family 

with  a  much  greater  legitimacy,  as  a  book  of 
metaphysics.  But  life  is  always  a  novel.  Our 
existence  may  cease  to  be  a  song;  it  may  cease 
even  to  be  a  beautiful  lament.  Our  existence 
may  not  be  an  intelligible  justice,  or  even  a 
recognizable  wrong.  But  our  existence  is  still 
a  story.  In  the  fiery  alphabet  of  every  sunset 
is  written,  *^to  be  continued  in  our  next."  If 
we  have  sufiicient  intellect,  we  can  finish  a 
philosophical  and  exact  deduction,  and  be  cer- 
tain that  we  are  finishing  it  right.  With  the 
adequate  brain-power  we  could  finish  any 
scientific  discovery,  and  be  certain  that  we  were 
finishing  it  right.  But  not  with  the  most 
gigantic  intellect  could  we  finish  the  simplest 
or  silliest  story,  and  be  certain  that  we  were 
finishing  it  right.  That  is  because  a  story  has 
behind  it,  not  merely  intellect  which  is  partly 
mechanical,  but  will,  which  is  in  its  essence 
divine.  The  narrative  writer  can  send  his  hero 
to  the  gallows  if  he  likes  in  the  last  chapter  but 
«Dne.  He  can  do  it  by  the  same  divine  caprice 
whereby  he,  the  author,  can  go  to  the  gallows 
himself,  and  to  hell  afterwards  if  he  chooses. 
And  the  same  civilization,  the  chivalric  Euro- 
pean civilization  which  asserted  freewill  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  produced  the  thing  called 
*^ fiction"   in  the  eighteenth.    When  Thomas 

193 


Heretics 


Aquinas  asserted  the  spiritual  liberty  of  man, 
he  created  all  the  bad  novels  in  the  circulating 
libraries. 

But  in  order  that  life  should  be  a  story  or 
romance  to  us,  it  is  necessary  that  a  great  part 
of  it,  at  any  rate,  should  be  settled  for  us  with- 
out our  permission.  If  we  wish  life  to  be  a 
system,  this  may  be  a  nuisance;  but  if  we  wish 
it  to  be  a  drama,  it  is  an  essential.  It  may 
often  happen,  no  doubt,  that  a  drama  may  be 
written  by  somebody  else  which  we  like  very 
little.  But  we  should  like  it  still  less  if  the 
author  came  before  the  curtain  every  hour  or 
so,  and  forced  on  us  the  whole  trouble  of  in- 
venting the  next  act.  A  man  has  control  over 
many  things  in  his  life;  he  has  control  over 
enough  things  to  be  the  hero  of  a  novel.  But 
if  he  had  control  over  everything,  there  would 
be  so  much  hero  that  there  would  be  no  novel. 
And  the  reason  why  the  lives  of  the  rich  are  at 
bottom  so  tame  and  uneventful  is  simply  that 
they  can  choose  the  events.  They  are  dull 
because  they  are  omnipotent.  They  fail  to  feel 
adventures  because  they  can  make  the  adven- 
tures. The  thing  which  keeps  life  romantic 
and  full  of  fiery  possibilities  is  the  existence  of 
these  great  plain  limitations  which  force  all 
of  us  to  meet  the  things  we  do  not  like  or  do 

194 


On  the  Institution  of  the  Family 

not  expect.  It  is  vain  for  the  supercilious 
modems  to  talk  of  being  in  uncongenial  sur- 
roundings. To  be  in  a  romance  is  to  be  in 
uncongenial  surroundings.  To  be  bom  into 
this  earth  is  to  be  born  into  uncongenial  sur- 
roundings, hence  to  be  born  into  a  romance. 
Of  all  these  great  limitations  and  frameworks 
which  fashion  and  create  the  poetry  and  variety 
of  life,  the  family  is  the  most  definite  and  im- 
portant. Hence  it  is  misunderstood  by  the 
moderns,  who  imagine  that  romance  would  exist 
most  perfectly  in  a  complete  state  of  what  they 
call  liberty.  They  think  that  if  a  man  makes 
a  gesture  it  would  be  a  startling  and  romantic 
matter  that  the  sun  should  fall  from  the 
sky.  But  the  startling  and  romantic  thing 
about  the  sun  is  that  it  does  not  fall  from  the 
sky.  They  are  seeking  under  every  shape  and 
form  a  world  where  there  are  no  limitations  — 
that  is,  a  world  where  there  are  no  outlines; 
that  is,  a  world  where  there  are  no  shapes. 
There  is  nothing  baser  than  that  infinity. 
They  say  they  wish  to  be  as  strong  as  the  uni- 
verse, but  they  really  wish  the  whole  universe 
as  weak  as  themselves. 


195 


XV  —  On  Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart 
Set 

IN  one  sense,  at  any  rate,  it  is  more  valuable 
to  read  bad  literature  than  good  literature. 
Good  literature  may  tell  us  the  mind  of 
one  man;  but  bad  literature  may  tell  us 
the  mind  of  many  men.  A  good  novel  tells  us 
the  truth  about  its  hero;  but  a  bad  novel  tells 
us  the  truth  about  its  author.  It  does  much 
more  than  that,  it  tells  us  the  truth  about  its 
readers;  and,  oddly  enough,  it  tells  us  this  all 
the  more  the  more  cynical  and  immoral  be  the 
motive  of  its  manufacture.  The  more  dis- 
honest a  book  is  as  a  book  the  more  honest  it 
is  as  a  public  document.  A  sincere  novel  ex- 
hibits the  simplicity  of  one  particular  man;  an 
insincere  novel  exhibits  the  simplicity  of  man- 
kind. The  pedantic  decisions  and  definable 
readjustments  of  man  may  be  found  in  scrolls 
and  statute  books  and  scriptures;  but  men's 
basic  assumptions  and  everlasting  energies  are 
to  be  found  in  penny  dreadfuls  and  halfpenny 
novelettes.  Thus  a  man,  like  many  men  of 
real  culture  in  our  day,  might  learn  from  good 
literature  nothing  except  the  power  to  appre- 

196 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

ciate  good  literature.  But  from  bad  literature 
he  might  learn  to  govern  empires  and  look  over 
the  map  of  mankind. 

There  is  one  rather  interesting  example  of 
this  state  of  things  in  which  the  weaker  litera- 
ture is  really  the  stronger  and  the  stronger  the 
weaker.  It  is  the  case  of  what  may  be  called, 
for  the  sake  of  an  approximate  description, 
the  literature  of  aristocracy;  or,  if  you  prefer 
the  description,  the  literature  of  snobbishness. 
Now,  if  any  one  wishes  to  find  a  really  effective 
and  comprehensible  and  permanent  case  for 
aristocracy  well  and  sincerely  stated,  let  him 
read,  not  the  modem  philosophical  conserva- 
tives, not  even  Nietzsche,  let  him  read  the  Bow 
Bells  Novelettes.  Of  the  case  of  Nietzsche  I 
am  confessedly  more  doubtful.  Nietzsche  and 
the  Bow  Bells  Novelettes  have  both  obviously 
the  same  fundamental  character;  they  both 
worship  the  tall  man  with  curling  moustaches 
and  herculean  bodily  power,  and  they  both 
worship  him  in  a  manner  which  is  somewhat 
feminine  and  hysterical.  Even  here,  however, 
the  Novelette  easily  maintains  its  philosophical 
superiority,  because  it  does  attribute  to  the 
strong  man  those  virtues  which  do  commonly 
belong  to  him,  such  virtues  as  laziness  and  kind- 
liness and  a  rather  reckless  benevolence,  and  a 

197 


Heretics 


great  dislike  of  hurting  the  weak.  Nietzsche, 
on  the  other  hand,  attributes  to  the  strong  man 
that  scorn  against  weakness  which  only  exists 
among  invalids.  It  is  not,  however,  of  the 
secondary  merits  of  the  great  German  philoso- 
pher, but  of  the  primary  merits  of  the  Bow 
Bells  Novelettes,  that  it  is  my  present  affair  to 
speak.  The  picture  of  aristocracy  in  the  popu- 
lar sentimental  novelette  seems  to  me  very 
satisfactory  as  a  permanent  political  and  philo- 
sophical guide.  It  may  be  inaccurate  about 
details  such  as  the  title  by  which  a  baronet  is 
addressed  or  the  width  of  a  mountain  chasm 
which  a  baronet  can  conveniently  leap,  but  it 
is  not  a  bad  description  of  the  general  idea  and 
intention  of  aristocracy  as  they  exist  in  human 
affairs.  The  essential  dream  of  aristocracy  is 
magnificence  and  valour;  and  if  the  Family 
Herald  Supplement  sometimes  distorts  or  exag- 
gerates these  things,  at  least,  it  does  not  fall 
short  in  them.  It  never  errs  by  making  the 
mountain  chasm  too  narrow  or  the  title  of  the 
baronet  insufficiently  impressive.  But  above 
this  sane  reliable  old  literature  of  snobbishness 
there  has  arisen  in  our  time  another  kind  of 
literature  of  snobbishness  which,  with  its  much 
higher  pretensions,  seems  to  me  worthy  of  very 
much  less  respect.    Incidentally  (if  that  mat- 

198 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

ters),  it  is  much  better  literature.  But  it  is 
immeasurably  worse  philosophy,  immeasurably 
worse  ethics  and  politics,  immeasurably  worse 
vital  rendering  of  aristocracy  and  humanity  as 
they  really  are.  From  such  books  as  those  of 
which  I  wish  now  to  speak  we  can  discover 
what  a  clever  man  can  do  with  the  idea  of 
aristocracy.  But  from  the  Family  Herald  Sup- 
plement literature  we  can  learn  what  the  idea 
of  aristocracy  can  do  with  a  man  who  is  not 
clever.  And  when  we  know  that  we  know 
English  history. 

This  new  aristocratic  fiction  must  have  caught 
the  attention  of  everybody  who  has  read  the 
best  fiction  for  the  last  fifteen  years.  It  is  that 
genuine  or  alleged  literature  of  the  Smart  Set 
which  represents  that  set  as  distinguished,  not 
only  by  smart  dresses,  but  by  smart  sayings. 
To  the  bad  baronet,  to  the  good  baronet,  to 
the  romantic  and  misunderstood  baronet  who 
is  supposed  to  be  a  bad  baronet,  but  is  a  good 
baronet,  this  school  has  added  a  conception 
undreamed  of  in  the  former  years  —  the  con- 
ception of  an  amusing  baronet.  The  aristocrat 
is  not  merely  to  be  taller  than  mortal  men  and 
stronger  and  handsomer,  he  is  also  to  be  more 
witty.  He  is  the  long  man  with  the  short  epi- 
gram.    Many  eminent,  and  deservedly  eminent, 

199 


Heretics 


modem  novelists  must  accept  some  responsi- 
bility for  having  supported  this  worst  form  of 
snobbishness  —  an  intellectual  snobbishness. 
The  talented  author  of  "Dodo"  is  responsible 
for  having  in  some  sense  created  the  fashion  as 
a  fashion.  Mr.  Hichens,  in  the  "Green  Car- 
nation/^ reaffirmed  the  strange  idea  that  young 
noblemen  talk  well;  though  his  case  had  some 
vague  biographical  foundation,  and  in  conse- 
quence an  excuse.  Mrs.  Craigie  is  considerably 
guilty  in  the  matter,  although,  or  rather  because, 
she  has  combined  the  aristocratic  note  with  a 
note  of  some  moral  and  even  religious  sincerity. 
When  you  are  saving  a  man's  soul,  even  in  a 
novel,  it  is  indecent  to  mention  that  he  is  a 
gentleman.  Nor  can  blame  in  this  matter  be 
altogether  removed  from  a  man  of  much  greater 
ability,  and  a  man  who  has  proved  his  possession 
of  the  highest  of  human  instinct,  the  romantic 
instinct  —  I  mean  Mr.  Anthony  Hope.  In  a 
galloping,  impossible  melodrama  like  "The 
Prisoner  of  Zenda,"  the  blood  of  kings  formed 
an  excellent  fantastic  thread  or  theme.  But  the 
blood  of  kings  is  not  a  thing  that  can  be  taken 
seriously.  And  when,  for  example,  Mr.  Hope 
devotes  so  much  serious  and  sympathetic  study 
to  the  man  called  Tristram  of  Blent,  a  man  who 
throughout  burning  boyhood  thought  of  nothing 

200 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

but  a  silly  old  estate,  we  feel  even  in  Mr.  Hope 
the  hint  of  this  excessive  concern  about  the 
oligarchic  idea.  It  is  hard  for  any  ordinary 
person  to  feel  so  much  interest  in  a  young  man 
whose  whole  aim  is  to  own  the  house  of  Blent 
at  the  time  when  every  other  young  man  is 
owning  the  stars. 

Mr.  Hope,  however,  is  a  very  mild  case,  and 
in  him  there  is  not  only  an  element  of  romance, 
but  also  a  fine  element  of  irony  which  warns  us 
against  taking  all  this  elegance  too  seriously. 
Above  all,  he  shows  his  sense  in  not  making 
his  noblemen  so  incredibly  equipped  with  im- 
promptu repartee.  This  habit  of  insisting  on 
the  wit  of  the  wealthier  classes  is  the  last  and 
most  servile  of  all  the  servilities.  It  is,  as  I 
have  said,  immeasurably  more  contemptible 
than  the  snobbishness  of  the  novelette  which 
describes  the  nobleman  as  smiling  like  an  Apollo 
or  riding  a  mad  elephant.  These  may  be  exag- 
gerations of  beauty  and  courage,  but  beauty  and 
courage  are  the  unconscious  ideals  of  aristocrats, 
even  of  stupid  aristocrats. 

The  nobleman  of  the  novelette  may  not  be 
sketched  with  any  very  close  or  conscientious 
attention  to  the  daily  habits  of  noblemen.  But 
he  is  something  more  important  than  a  reality; 
he  is  a  practical  ideal.    The  gentleman  of  fiction 

20I 


Heretics 


may  not  copy  the  gentleman  of  real  life;  but 
the  gentleman  of  real  life  is  copying  the  gentle- 
man of  fiction.  He  may  not  be  particularly 
good-looking,  but  he  would  rather  be  good- 
looking  than  anything  else;  he  may  not  have 
ridden  on  a  mad  elephant,  but  he  rides  a  pony 
as  far  as  possible  with  an  air  as  if  he  had. 
And,  upon  the  whole,  the  upper  class  not  only 
especially  desire  these  qualities  of  beauty  and 
courage,  but  in  some  degree,  at  any  rate,  espe- 
cially possess  them.  Thus  there  is  nothing 
really  mean  or  sycophantic  about  the  popular 
literature  which  makes  all  its  marquises  seven 
feet  high.  It  is  snobbish,  but  it  is  not  servile. 
Its  exaggeration  is  based  on  an  exuberant  and 
honest  admiration;  its  honest  admiration  is 
based  upon  something  which  is  in  some  degree, 
at  any  rate,  really  there.  The  English  lower 
classes  do  not  fear  the  English  upper  classes  in 
the  least;  nobody  could.  They  simply  and 
freely  and  sentimentally  worship  them.  The 
strength  of  the  aristocracy  is  not  in  the  aristoc- 
racy at  all;  it  is  in  the  slums.  It  is  not  in  the 
House  of  Lords;  it  is  not  in  the  Civil  Service; 
it  is  not  in  the  Government  offices;  it  is  not  even 
in  the  huge  and  disproportionate  monopoly  of 
the  English  land.  It  is  in  a  certain  spirit.  It 
is  in  the  fact  that  when  a  navvy  wishes  to  praise 

202 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

a  man,  it  comes  readily  to  his  tongue  to  say 
that  he  has  behaved  like  a  gentleman.  From  a 
democratic  point  of  view  he  might  as  well  say 
that  he  had  behaved  like  a  viscount.  The 
oligarchic  character  of  the  modem  English  com- 
monwealth does  not  rest,  like  many  oligarchies, 
on  the  cruelty  of  the  rich  to  the  poor.  It  does 
not  even  rest  on  the  kindness  of  the  rich  to  the 
poor.  It  rests  on  the  perennial  and  unfailing 
kindness  of  the  poor  to  the  rich. 

The  snobbishness  of  bad  literature,  then,  is 
not  servile;  but  the  snobbishness  of  good  liter- 
ature is  servile.  The  old-fashioned  halfpenny 
romance  where  the  duchesses  sparkled  with 
diamonds  was  not  servile ;  but  the  new  romance 
where  they  sparkle  with  epigrams  is  servile. 
For  in  thus  attributing  a  special  and  startling 
degree  of  intellect  and  conversational  or  con- 
troversial power  to  the  upper  classes,  we  are 
attributing  something  which  is  not  especially 
their  virtue  or  even  especially  their  aim.  We 
are,  in  the  words  of  Disraeli  (who,  being  a 
genius  and  not  a  gentleman,  has  perhaps  pri- 
marily to  answer  for  the  introduction  of  this 
method  of  flattering  the  gentry),  we  are  per- 
forming the  essential  function  of  flattery  which 
is  flattering  the  people  for  the  qualities  they 
have  not  got.     Praise  may  be  gigantic   and 

203 


Heretics 


insane  without  having  any  quality  of  flattery 
so  long  as  it  is  praise  of  something  that  is 
noticeably  in  existence.  A  man  may  say  that  a 
giraffe's  head  strikes  the  stars,  or  that  a  whale 
fills  the  German  Ocean,  and  still  be  only  in  a 
rather  excited  state  about  a  favourite  animal. 
But  when  he  begins  to  congratulate  the  giraffe 
on  his  feathers,  and  the  whale  on  the  elegance 
of  his  legs,  we  find  ourselves  confronted  with 
that  social  element  which  we  call  flattery.  The 
middle  and  lower  orders  of  London  can  sin- 
cerely, though  not  perhaps  safely,  admire  the 
health  and  grace  of  the  English  aristocracy. 
And  this  for  the  very  simple  reason  that  the 
aristocrats  are,  upon  the  whole,  more  healthy 
and  graceful  than  the  poor.  But  they  cannot 
honestly  admire  the  wit  of  the  aristocrats.  And 
this  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  aristocrats 
are  not  more  witty  than  the  poor,  but  a  very 
great  deal  less  so.  A  man  does  not  hear,  as  in 
the  smart  novels,  these  gems  of  verbal  felicity 
dropped  between  diplomatists  at  dinner.  Where 
he  really  does  hear  them  is  between  two  omni- 
bus conductors  in  a  block  in  Holborn.  The 
witty  peer  whose  impromptus  fill  the  books  of 
Mrs.  Craigie  or  Miss  Fowler,  would,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  be  torn  to  shreds  in  the  art  of 
conversation  by  the  first  boot-black  he  had  the 

204 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

misfortune  to  fall  foul  of.  The  poor  are  merely 
sentimental,  and  very  excusably  sentimental,  if 
they  praise  the  gentleman  for  having  a  ready 
hand  and  ready  money.  But  they  are  strictly 
slaves  and  sycophants  if  they  praise  him  for 
having  a  ready  tongue.  For  that  they  have 
far  more  themselves. 

The  element  of  oligarchical  sentiment  in 
these  novels,  however,  has,  I  think,  another 
and  subtler  aspect,  an  aspect  more  difficult  to 
understand  and  more  worth  understanding. 
The  modem  gentleman,  particularly  the  modem 
English  gentleman,  has  become  so  central  and 
important  in  these  books,  and  through  them  in 
the  whole  of  our  current  literature  and  our 
current  mode  of  thought,  that  certain  qualities 
of  his,  whether  original  or  recent,  essential  or 
accidental,  have  altered  the  quality  of  our 
English  comedy.  In  particular,  that  stoical 
ideal,  absurdly  supposed  to  be  the  English 
ideal,  has  stiffened  and  chilled  us.  It  is  not 
the  English  ideal;  but  it  is  to  some  extent  the 
aristocratic  ideal;  or  it  may  be  only  the  ideal 
of  aristocracy  in  its  autumn  or  decay.  The 
gentleman  is  a  Stoic  because  he  is  a  sort  of 
savage,  because  he  is  filled  with  a  great  elemen- 
tal fear  that  some  stranger  will  speak  to  him. 
That  is  why  a  third-class  carriage  is  a  commu- 

205 


Heretics 


nity,  while  a  first-class  carriage  is  a  place  of 
wild  hermits.  But  this  matter,  which  is  diffi- 
cult, I  may  be  permitted  to  approach  in  a  more 
circuitous  way. 

The  haunting  element  of  ineffectualness 
which  runs  through  so  much  of  the  witty  and 
epigrammatic  fiction  fashionable  during  the 
last  eight  or  ten  years,  which  runs  through  such 
works  of  a  real  though  varying  ingenuity  as 
''Dodo,''  or  "Concerning  Isabel  Camaby,"  or 
even  *'Some  Emotions  and  a  Moral,"  may  be 
expressed  in  various  ways,  but  to  most  of  us 
I  think  it  will  ultimately  amount  to  the  same 
thing.  This  new  frivolity  is  inadequate  because 
there  is  in  it  no  strong  sense  of  an  unuttered 
joy.  The  men  and  women  who  exchange  the 
repartees  may  not  only  be  hating  each  other, 
but  hating  even  themselves.  Any  one  of  them 
might  be  bankrupt  that  day,  or  sentenced  to  be 
shot  the  next.  They  are  joking,  not  because 
they  are  merry,  but  because  they  are  not;  out 
of  the  emptiness  of  the  heart  the  mouth  speaketh. 
Even  when  they  talk  pure  nonsense  it  is  a  care- 
ful nonsense  —  a  nonsense  of  which  they  are 
economical,  or,  to  use  the  perfect  expression  of 
Mr.  W.  S.  Gilbert  in  "Patience,"  it  is  such 
"precious  nonsense."  Even  when  they  become 
light-headed  they  do  not  become  light-hearted. 

206 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

All  those  who  have  read  anything  of  the  ration- 
alism of  the  modems  know  that  their  Reason 
is  a  sad  thing.  But  even  their  unreason  is  sad. 
The  causes  of  this  incapacity  are  also  not 
very  difficult  to  indicate.  The  chief  of  all,  of 
course,  is  that  miserable  fear  of  being  senti- 
mental, which  is  the  meanest  of  all  the  modem 
tep'ors  —  meaner  even  than  the  terror  which 
produces  hygiene.  Everywhere  the  robust  and 
uproarious  humour  has  come  from  the  men 
who  were  capable  not  merely  of  sentimentalism, 
but  a  very  silly  sentimentalism.  There  has 
been  no  humour  so  robust  or  uproarious  as  that 
of  the  sentimentalist  Steele  or  the  sentimentalist 
Sterne  or  the  sentimentalist  Dickens.  These 
creatures  who  wept  like  women  were  the  crea- 
tures who  laughed  like  men.  It  is  tme  that 
the  humour  of  Micawber  is  good  literature  and 
that  the  pathos  of  little  Nell  is  bad.  But  the 
kind  of  man  who  had  the  courage  to  write  so 
badly  in  the  one  case  is  the  kind  of  man  who 
would  have  the  courage  to  write  so  well  in  the 
other.  The  same  unconsciousness,  the  same 
violent  innocence,  the  same  gigantesque  scale  of 
action  which  brought  the  Napoleon  of  Comedy 
his  Jena  brought  him  also  his  Moscow.  And 
herein  is  especially  shown  the  frigid  and  feeble 
limitations  of  our  modem  wits.    They  make 

207 


Heretics 


violent  efforts,  they  make  heroic  and  almost 
pathetic  efforts,  but  they  cannot  really  write 
badly.  There  are  moments  when  we  almost 
think  that  they  are  achieving  the  effect,  but  our 
hope  shrivels  to  nothing  the  moment  we  com- 
pare their  little  failures  with  the  enormous 
imbecilities  of  Byron  or  Shakespeare. 

For  a  hearty  laugh  it  is  necessary  to  have 
touched  the  heart.  I  do  not  know  why  touch- 
ing the  heart  should  always  be  connected  only 
with  the  idea  of  touching  it  to  compassion  or  a 
sense  of  distress.  The  heart  can  be  touched 
to  joy  and  triumph;  the  heart  can  be  touched  to 
amusement.  But  all  our  comedians  are  tragic 
comedians.  These  later  fashionable  writers  are 
so  pessimistic  in  bone  and  marrow  that  they 
never  seem  able  to  imagine  the  heart  having 
any  concern  with  mirth.  When  they  speak  of 
the  heart,  they  always  mean  the  pangs  and 
disappointments  of  the  emotional  life.  When 
they  say  that  a  man's  heart  is  in  the  right  place, 
they  mean,  apparently,  that  it  is  in  his  boots. 
Our  ethical  societies  understand  fellowship,  but 
they  do  not  understand  good  fellowship.  Sim- 
ilarly, our  wits  understand  talk,  but  not  what 
Dr.  Johnson  called  a  good  talk.  In  order  to 
have,  like  Dr.  Johnson,  a  good  talk,  it  is  em- 
phatically necessary  to  be,  like  Dr.  Johnson, 

20S 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

a  good  man  —  to  have  friendship  and  honour 
and  an  abysmal  tenderness.  Above  all,  it  is 
necessary  to  be  openly  and  indecently  humane, 
to  confess  with  fulness  all  the  primary  pities  and 
fears  of  Adam.  Johnson  was  a  clear-headed 
humorous  man,  and  therefore  he  did  not  mind 
talking  seriously  about  religion.  Johnson  was 
a  brave  man,  one  of  the  bravest  that  ever 
walked,  and  therefore  he  did  not  mind  avowing 
to  any  one  his  consuming  fear  of  death. 

The  idea  that  there  is  something  English  in 
the  repression  of  one's  feelings  is  one  of  those 
ideas  which  no  Englishman  ever  heard  of  until 
England  began  to  be  governed  exclusively  by 
Scotchmen,  Americans,  and  Jews.  At  the  best, 
the  idea  is  a  generalization  from  the  Duke  of 
Wellington  —  who  was  an  Irishman.  At  the 
worst,  it  is  a  part  of  that  silly  Teutonism  which 
knows  as  little  about  England  as  it  does  about 
anthropology,  but  which  is  always  talking  about 
Vikings.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Vikings  did 
not  repress  their  feelings  in  the  least.  They 
cried  like  babies  and  kissed  each  other  like 
girls;  in  short,  they  acted  in  that  respect  like 
Achilles  and  all  strong  heroes  the  children  of 
the  gods.  And  though  the  English  nationality 
has  probably  not  much  more  to  do  with  the 
Vikings  than  the  French  nationality  or  the  Irish 

209 


Heretics 


nationality,  the  English  have  certainly  been  the 
children  of  the  Vikings  in  the  matter  of  tears 
and  kisses.  It  is  not  merely  true  that  all  the 
most  typically  English  men  of  letters,  like 
Shakespeare  and  Dickens,  Richardson  and 
Thackeray,  were  sentimentalists.  It  is  also 
true  that  all  the  most  typically  English  men  of 
action  were  sentimentalists,  if  possible,  more 
sentimental.  In  the  great  Elizabethan  age, 
when  the  English  nation  was  finally  hammered 
out,  in  the  great  eighteenth  century  when  the 
British  Empire  was  being  built  up  everywhere, 
where  in  all  these  times,  where  was  this  sym- 
bolic stoical  Englishman  who  dresses  in  drab 
and  black  and  represses  his  feelings  ?  Were  all 
the  Elizabethan  paUadins  and  pirates  like  that  ? 
Were  any  of  them  like  that?  Was  Grenville 
concealing  his  emotions  when  he  broke  wine- 
glasses to  pieces  with  his  teeth  and  bit  them  till 
the  blood  poured  down  ?  Was  Essex  restraining 
his  excitement  when  he  threw  his  hat  into  the 
sea?  Did  Raleigh  think  it  sensible  to  answer 
the  Spanish  guns  only,  as  Stevenson  says,  with 
a  flourish  of  insulting  trumpets?  Did  Sydney 
ever  miss  an  opportunity  of  making  a  theatrical 
remark  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life  and  death  ? 
Were  even  the  Puritans  Stoics?  The  English 
Puritans  repressed  a  good  deal,  but  even  they 

aio 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

were  too  English  to  repress  their  feelings.    It 
was  by  a  great  miracle  of  genius  assuredly  that 
Carlyle    contrived    to    admire    simultaneously 
two  things  so  irreconcilably  opposed  as  silence 
and  Oliver  Cromwell.     Cromwell  was  the  very 
reverse  of  a  strong,  silent  man.     Cromwell  was 
always  talking,  when  he  was  not  crying.    No- 
body,  I   suppose,   will  accuse   the  author  of 
*^  Grace  Abounding"  of  being  ashamed  of  his 
feelings.     Milton,  indeed,  it  might  be  possible 
to  represent  as  a  Stoic;  in  some  sense  he  was  a 
Stoic,  just  as  he  was  a  prig  and  a  polygamist 
and    several    other    unpleasant    and    heathen 
things.     But  when  we  have  passed  that  great 
and  desolate  name,  which  may  really  be  counted 
an  exception,  we  find  the  tradition  of  English 
emotionalism   immediately   resumed   and   un- 
brokenly  continuous.    Whatever  may  have  been 
the  moral  beauty  of  the  passions  of  Etheridge 
and   Dorset,    Sedley   and    Buckingham,    they 
cannot  be  accused  of  the  fault  of  fastidiously 
concealing  them.     Charles  the  Second  was  very 
popular  with  the  English  because,  like  all  the 
jolly  English  kings,  he  displayed  his  passions. 
William  the  Dutchman  was  very  unpopular 
with  the  English  because,  not  being  an  English- 
man, he  did  hide  his  emotions.    He  was,  in 
fact,   precisely  the  ideal  Englishman  of  our 

911 


Heretics 


modem  theory;  and  precisely  for  that  reason 
all  the  real  Englishmen  loathed  him  like  lep- 
rosy. With  the  rise  of  the  great  England  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  we  find  this  open  and 
emotional  tone  still  maintained  in  letters  and 
politics,  in  arts  and  in  arms.  Perhaps  the  only 
quality  which  was  possessed  in  common  by 
the  great  Fielding  and  the  great  Richardson 
was  that  neither  of  them  hid  their  feelings. 
Swift,  indeed,  was  hard  and  logical,  because 
Swift  was  Irish.  And  when  we  pass  to  the 
soldiers  and  the  rulers,  the  patriots  and  the 
empire-builders  of  the  eighteenth  century,  we 
find,  as  I  have  said,  that  they  were,  if  possible, 
more  romantic  than  the  romancers,  more  poeti- 
cal than  the  poets.  Chatham,  who  showed  the 
world  all  his  strength,  showed  the  House  of 
Commons  all  his  weakness.  Wolfe  walked 
about  the  room  with  a  drawn  sword  calling 
himself  Caesar  and  Hannibal,  and  went  to  death 
with  poetry  in  his  mouth.  Clive  was  a  man  of 
the  same  type  as  Cromwell  or  Bunyan,  or,  for 
the  matter  of  that,  Johnson  —  that  is,  he  was  a 
strong,  sensible  man  with  a  kind  of  running 
spring  of  hysteria  and  melancholy  in  him.  Like 
Johnson,  he  was  all  the  more  healthy  because 
he  was  morbid.  The  tales  of  all  the  admirals 
and  adventurers  of  that  England  are  full  of 

212 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

braggadocio,  of  sentimentality,  of  splendid  affec- 
tation. But  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  multiply 
examples  of  the  essentially  romantic  Englishman 
when  one  example  towers  above  them  all.  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling  has  said  complacently  of  the 
English,  *^  We  do  not  fall  on  the  neck  and  kiss 
when  we  come  together."  It  is  true  that  this 
ancient  and  universal  custom  has  vanished 
with  the  modem  weakening  of  England.  Syd- 
ney would  have  thought  nothing  of  kissing 
Spenser.  But  I  willingly  concede  that  Mr. 
Broderick  would  not  be  likely  to  kiss  Mr. 
Arnold-Foster,  if  that  be  any  proof  of  the 
increased  manliness  and  military  greatness  of 
England.  But  the  Englishman  who  does  not 
show  his  feelings  has  not  altogether  given  up 
the  power  of  seeing  something  English  in  the 
great  sea-hero  of  the  Napoleonic  war.  You 
cannot  break  the  legend  of  Nelson.  And  across 
the  sunset  of  that  glory  is  written  in  flaming 
letters  for  ever  the  great  English  sentiment, 
'^Kiss  me.  Hardy." 

This  ideal  of  self-repression,  then,  is,  whatever 
else  it  is,  not  English.  It  is,  perhaps,  somewhat 
Oriental,  it  is  slightly  Prussian,  but  in  the  main 
it  does  not  come,  I  think,  from  any  racial  or 
national  source.  It  is,  as  I  have  said,  in  some 
sense  aristocratic;  it  comes  not  from  a  people, 

213 


Heretics 


but  from  a  class.  Even  aristocracy,  I  think, 
was  not  quite  so  stoical  in  the  days  when  it  was 
really  strong.  But  whether  this  unemotional 
ideal  be  the  genuine  tradition  of  the  gentleman, 
or  only  one  of  the  inventions  of  the  modern 
gentleman  (who  may  be  called  the  decayed 
gentleman),  it  certainly  has  something  to  do 
with  the  unemotional  quality  in  these  society 
novels.  From  representing  aristocrats  as  people 
who  suppressed  their  feelings,  it  has  been  an 
easy  step  to  representing  aristocrats  as  people 
who  had  no  feelings  to  suppress.  Thus  the 
modem  oligarchist  has  made  a  virtue  for  the 
oligarchy  of  the  hardness  as  well  as  the  bright- 
ness of  the  diamond.  Like  a  sonneteer  ad- 
dressing his  lady  in  the  seventeenth  century,  he 
seems  to  use  the  word  "cold"  almost  as  a 
eulogium,  and  the  word  '^ heartless"  as  a  kind 
of  compliment.  Of  course,  in  people  so  incu- 
rably kind-hearted  and  babyish  as  are  the  Eng- 
lish gentry,  it  would  be  impossible  to  create 
an3rthing  that  can  be  called  positive  cruelty;  so 
in  these  books  they  exhibit  a  sort  of  negative 
cruelty.  They  cannot  be  cruel  in  acts,  but  they 
can  be  so  in  words.  All  this  means  one  thing, 
and  one  thing  only.  It  means  that  the  living 
and  invigorating  ideal  of  England  must  be 
looked  for  in  the  masses;  it  must  be  looked  for 

214 


Smart  Novelists  and  the  Smart  Set 

where  Dickens  found  it  —  Dickens,  among 
whose  glories  it  was  to  be  a  humorist,  to  be  a 
sentimentalist,  to  be  an  optimist,  to  be  a  poor 
man,  to  be  an  Englishman,  but  the  greatest  of 
whose  glories  was  that  he  saw  all  mankind  in 
its  amazing  and  tropical  luxuriance,  and  did 
not  even  notice  the  aristocracy;  Dickens,  the 
greatest  of  whose  glories  was  that  he  could  not 
describe  a  gentleman. 


9IS 


XVI  —  On    Mr.    McCabe    and    a    Divine 
Frivolity 

A  CRITIC  once  remonstrated  with  me 
saying,  with  an  air  of  indignant 
reasonableness,  ^^If  you  must  make 
jokes,  at  least  you  need  not  make 
them  on  such  serious  subjects."  I  replied  with 
a  natural  simplicity  and  wonder,  "About  what 
other  subjects  can  one  make  jokes  except 
serious  subjects?"  It  is  quite  useless  to  talk 
about  profane  jesting.  All  jesting  is  in  its 
nature  profane,  in  the  sense  that  it  must  be 
the  sudden  realization  that  something  which 
thinks  itself  solemn  is  not  so  very  solemn  after 
all.  If  a  joke  is  not  a  joke  about  religion  or 
morals,  it  is  a  joke  about  police-magistrates  or 
scientific  professors  or  undergraduates  dressed 
up  as  Queen  Victoria.  And  people  joke  about 
the  police-magistrate  more  than  they  joke  about 
the  Pope,  not  because  the  police-magistrate  is  a 
more  frivolous  subject,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
because  the  police-magistrate  is  a  more  serious 
subject  than  the  Pope.  The  Bishop  of  Rome 
has  no  jurisdiction  in  this  realm  of  England; 
whereas  the  police-magistrate  may  bring  his 
solemnity   to   bear   quite   suddenly   upon   us. 

216 


Mr,  McCabe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

Men  make  jokes  about  old  scientific  professors, 
even  more  than  they  make  them  about  bishops 
—  not  because  science  is  lighter  than  religion, 
but  because  science  is  always  by  its  nature  more 
solemn  and  austere  than  religion.  It  is  not  I; 
it  is  not  even  a  particular  class  of  journalists  or 
jesters  who  make  jokes  about  the  matters  which 
are  of  most  awful  import ;  it  is  the  whole  human 
race.  If  there  is  one  thing  more  than  another 
which  any  one  will  admit  who  has  the  smallest 
knowledge  of  the  world,  it  is  that  men  are 
always  speaking  gravely  and  earnestly  and  with 
the  utmost  possible  care  about  the  things  that 
are  not  important,  but  always  talking  frivo- 
lously about  the  things  that  are.  Men  talk  for 
hours  with  the  faces  of  a  college  of  cardinals 
about  things  like  golf,  or  tobacco,  or  waistcoats, 
01  party  politics.  But  all  the  most  grave  and 
dreadful  things  in  the  world  are  the  oldest  jokes 
in  the  world  —  being  married;  being  hanged. 

One  gentleman,  however,  Mr.  McCabe,  has 
in  this  matter  made  to  me  something  that 
almost  amounts  to  a  personal  appeal ;  and  as  he 
happens  to  be  a  man  for  whose  sincerity  and 
intellectual  virtue  I  have  a  high  respect,  I  do 
not  feel  inclined  to  let  it  pass  without  some 
attempt  to  satisfy  my  critic  in  the  matter.  Mr. 
McCabe  devotes  a  considerable  part  of  the  last 

217 


Heretics 


essay  in  the  collection  called  "Christianity  and 
Rationalism  on  Trial"  to  an  objection,  not  to 
my  thesis,  but  to  my  method,  and  a  very  friendly 
and  dignified  appeal  to  me  to  alter  it.  I  am 
much  inclined  to  defend  myself  in  this  matter 
out  of  mere  respect  for  Mr.  McCabe,  and  still 
more  so  out  of  mere  respect  for  the  truth  which 
is,  I  think,  in  danger  by  his  error,  not  only  in 
this  question,  but  in  others.  In  order  that 
there  may  be  no  injustice  done  in  the  matter, 
I  will  quote  Mr.  McCabe  himself.  "But  before 
I  follow  Mr.  Chesterton  in  some  detail,  I  would 
make  a  general  observation  on  his  method. 
He  is  as  serious  as  I  am  in  his  ultimate  purpose, 
and  I  respect  him  for  that.  He  knows,  as  I  do, 
that  humanity  stands  at  a  solemn  parting  of 
the  ways.  Towards  some  unknown  goal  it 
presses  through  the  ages,  impelled  by  an  over- 
mastering desire  of  happiness.  To-day  it  hesi- 
tates, light-heartedly  enough,  but  every  serious 
thinker  knows  how  momentous  the  decision 
may  be.  It  is,  apparently,  deserting  the  path 
of  religion  and  entering  upon  the  path  of  secu- 
larism. Will  it  lose  itself  in  quagmires  of  sen- 
suality down  this  new  path,  and  pant  and  toil 
through  years  of  civic  and  industrial  anarchy, 
only  to  learn  it  had  lost  the  road,  and  must 
return  to  religion?    Or  will  it  find  that  at  last 

3l8 


Mr.  McCabe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

it  is  leaving  the  mists  and  the  quagmires  behind 
it;  that  it  is  ascending  the  slope  of  the  hill  so 
long  dimly  discerned  ahead,  and  making  straight 
for  the  long-sought  Utopia  ?  This  is  the  drama 
of  our  time,  and  every  man  and  every  vi^oman 
should  understand  it. 

"Mr.  Chesterton  understands  it.  Further, 
he  gives  us  credit  for  understanding  it.  He  has 
nothing  of  that  paltry  meanness  or  strange  den- 
sity of  so  many  of  his  colleagues,  who  put  us 
down  as  aimless  iconoclasts  or  moral  anarchists. 
He  admits  that  we  are  waging  a  thankless  war 
for  what  we  take  to  be  Truth  and  Progress. 
He  is  doing  the  same.  But  why,  in  the  name 
of  all  that  is  reasonable,  should  we,  when  we 
are  agreed  on  the  momentousness  of  the  issue 
either  way,  forthwith  desert  serious  methods  of 
conducting  the  controversy?  Why,  when  the 
vital  need  of  our  time  is  to  induce  men  and 
women  to  collect  their  thoughts  occasionally, 
and  be  men  and  women  —  nay,  to  remember 
that  they  are  really  gods  that  hold  the  destinies 
of  humanity  on  their  knees  —  why  should  we 
think  that  this  kaleidoscopic  play  of  phrases  is 
inopportune?  The  ballets  of  the  Alhambra, 
and  the  fireworks  of  the  Crystal  Palace,  and 
Mr.  Chesterton's  Daily  News  articles,  have 
their  place  in  life.     But  how  a  serious  social 

219 


Heretics 


student  can  think  of  curing  the  thoughtless- 
ness of  our  generation  by  strained  paradoxes; 
of  giving  people  a  sane  grasp  of  social  problems 
by  literary  sleight-of-hand;  of  settling  impor- 
tant questions  by  a  reckless  shower  of  rocket- 
metaphors  and  inaccurate  ^  facts/  and  the  sub- 
stitution of  imagination  for  judgment,  I  cannot 
see." 

I  quote  this  passage  with  a  particular  pleasure, 
because  Mr.  McCabe  certainly  cannot  put  too 
strongly  the  degree  to  which  I  give  him  and 
his  school  credit  for  their  complete  sincerity 
and  responsibility  of  philosophical  attitude.  I 
am  quite  certain  that  they  mean  every  word 
they  say.  I  also  mean  every  word  I  say.  But 
why  is  it  that  Mr.  McCabe  has  some  sort  of 
mysterious  hesitation  about  admitting  that  I 
mean  every  word  I  say;  why  is  it  that  he  is 
not  quite  as  certain  of  my  mental  responsibility 
as  I  am  of  his  mental  responsibility?  If  we 
attempt  to  answer  the  question  directly  and 
well,  we  shall,  I  think,  have  come  to  the  root  of 
the  matter  by  the  shortest  cut. 

Mr.  McCabe  thinks  that  I  am  not  serious 
but  only  funny,  because  Mr.  McCabe  thinks 
that  funny  is  the  opposite  of  serious.  Funny 
is  the  opposite  of  not  funny,  and  of  nothing 
else.    The  question  of  whether  a  man  expresses 

220 


Mr:  McCahe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

himself  in  a  grotesque  or  laughable  phraseol- 
ogy, or  in  a  stately  and  restrained  phraseology, 
is  not  a  question  of  motive  or  of  moral  state,  it 
is  a  question  of  instinctive  language  and  self- 
expression.  Whether  a  man  chooses  to  tell  the 
truth  in  long  sentences  or  short  jokes  is  a  prob- 
lem analogous  to  whether  he  chooses  to  tell 
the  truth  in  French  or  German.  Whether  a 
man  preaches  his  gospel  grotesquely  or  gravely 
is  merely  like  the  question  of  whether  he 
preaches  it  in  prose  or  verse.  The  question  of 
whether  Swift  was  funny  in  his  irony  is  quite 
another  sort  of  question  to  the  question  of 
whether  Swift  was  serious  in  his  pessimism. 
Surely  even  Mr.  McCabe  would  not  maintain 
that  the  more  funny  ^^  Gulliver"  is  in  its  method 
the  less  it  can  be  sincere  in  its  object.  The 
truth  is,  as  I  have  said,  that  in  this  sense  the 
two  qualities  of  fun  and  seriousness  have  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  each  other,  they  are  no 
more  comparable  than  black  and  triangular. 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  is  funny  and  sincere.  Mr. 
George  Robey  is  funny  and  not  sincere.  Mr. 
McCabe  is  sincere  and  not  funny.  The  average 
Cabinet  Minister  is  not  sincere  and  not  funny. 

In  short,  Mr.  McCabe  is  under  the  influence 
of  a  primary  fallacy  which  I  have  found  very 
common  in  men  of  the  clerical  type.    Numbers 

221 


Heretics 


of  clergymen  have  from  time  to  time  reproached 
me  for  making  jokes  about  rehgion;  and  they 
have  almost  always  invoked  the  authority  of 
that  very  sensible  commandment  which  says, 
^'Thou  shalt  not  take  the  name  of  the  Lord 
thy  God  in  vain."  Of  course,  I  pointed  out 
that  I  was  not  in  any  conceivable  sense  taking 
the  name  in  vain.  To  take  a  thing  and  make 
a  joke  out  of  it  is  not  to  take  it  in  vain.  It  is, 
on  the  contrary,  to  take  it  and  use  it  for  an  un- 
commonly good  object.  To  use  a  thing  in  vain 
means  to  use  it  without  use.  But  a  joke  may 
be  exceedingly  useful;  it  may  contain  the  whole 
earthly  sense,  not  to  mention  the  whole  heavenly 
sense,  of  a  situation.  And  those  who  find  in 
the  Bible  the  commandment  can  find  in  the 
Bible  any  number  of  the  jokes.  In  the  same 
book  in  which  God's  name  is  fenced  from  being 
taken  in  vain,  God  himself  overwhelms  Job 
with  a  torrent  of  terrible  levities.  The  same 
book  which  says  that  God's  name  must  not  be 
taken  vainly,  talks  easily  and  carelessly  about 
God  laughing  and  God  winking.  Evidently  it 
is  not  here  that  we  have  to  look  for  genuine 
examples  of  what  is  meant  by  a  vain  use  of  the 
name.  And  it  is  not  very  difficult  to  see  where 
we  have  really  to  look  for  it.  The  people  (as 
I  tactfully  pointed  out  to  them)  who  really  take 

222 


Mr.  McCabe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

the  name  of  the  Lord  in  vain  are  the  clergymen 
themselves.  The  thing  which  is  fundamentally 
and  really  frivolous  is  not  a  careless  joke.  The 
thing  which  is  fundamentally  and  really  friv- 
olous is  a  careless  solemnity.  If  Mr.  McCabe 
really  wishes  to  know  what  sort  of  guarantee  of 
reality  and  solidity  is  afforded  by  the  mere  act 
of  what  is  called  talking  seriously,  let  him 
spend  a  happy  Sunday  in  going  the  round  of  the 
pulpits.  Or,  better  still,  let  him  drop  in  at 
the  House  of  Commons  or  the  House  of  Lords. 
Even  Mr.  McCabe  would  admit  that  these  men 
are  solemn  —  more  solemn  than  I  am.  And 
even  Mr.  McCabe,  I  think,  would  admit  that 
these  men  are  frivolous  —  more  frivolous  than 
I  am.  Why  should  Mr.  McCabe  be  so  eloquent 
about  the  danger  arising  from  fantastic  and 
paradoxical  writers?  Why  should  he  be  so 
ardent  in  desiring  grave  and  verbose  writers? 
There  are  not  so  very  many  fantastic  and 
paradoxical  writers.  But  there  are  a  gigantic 
number  of  grave  and  verbose  writers;  and  it  is 
by  the  efforts  of  the  grave  and  verbose  writers 
that  everything  that  Mr.  McCabe  detests  (and 
everything  that  I  detest,  for  that  matter)  is 
kept  in  existence  and  energy.  How  can  it  have 
come  about  that  a  man  as  intelligent  as  Mr. 
McCabe  can  think  that  paradox  and  jesting 

223 


Heretics 


stop  the  way  ?  It  is  solemnity  that  is  stopping 
the  way  in  every  department  of  modern  effort. 
It  is  his  own  favourite  *^ serious  methods;"  it  is 
his  own  favourite  ^^momentousness;"  it  is  his 
own  favourite  ^^ judgment"  which  stops  the 
way  everywhere.  Every  man  who  has  ever 
headed  a  deputation  to  a  minister  knows  this. 
Every  man  who  has  ever  written  a  letter  to  the 
Times  knows  it.  Every  rich  man  who  wishes 
to  stop  the  mouths  of  the  poor  talks  about 
'^momentousness."  Every  Cabinet  minister 
who  has  not  got  an  answer  suddenly  develops 
a  ** judgment."  Every  sweater  who  uses  vile 
methods  recommends  *^  serious  methods."  I 
said  a  moment  ago  that  sincerity  had  nothing 
to  do  with  solemnity,  but  I  confess  that  I  am 
not  so  certain  that  I  was  right.  In  the  modem 
world,  at  any  rate,  I  am  not  so  sure  that  I  was 
right.  In  the  modem  world  solemnity  is  the 
direct  enemy  of  sincerity.  In  the  modern  world 
sincerity  is  almost  always  on  one  side,  and 
solemnity  almost  always  on  the  other.  The 
only  answer  possible  to  the  fierce  and  glad 
attack  of  sincerity  is  the  miserable  answer  of 
solemnity.  Let  Mr.  McCabe,  or  any  one  else 
who  is  much  concerned  that  we  should  be  grave 
in  order  to  be  sincere,  simply  imagine  the  scene 
in  some  government  office  in  which  Mr.  Bemard 

224 


Mr.  McCabe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

Shaw  should  head  a  Socialist  deputation  to  Mr. 
Austen  Chamberlain.  On  which  side  would  be 
the  solemnity  ?    And  on  which  the  sincerity  ? 

I  am,  indeed,  delighted  to  discover  that  Mr. 
McCabe  reckons  Mr.  Shaw  along  with  me  in 
his  system  of  condemnation  of  frivolity.  He 
said  once,  I  believe,  that  he  always  wanted  Mr. 
Shaw  to  label  his  paragraphs  serious  or  comic. 
I  do  not  know  which  paragraphs  of  Mr.  Shaw 
are  paragraphs  to  be  labelled  serious;  but  surely 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  paragraph  of 
Mr.  McCabe's  is  one  to  be  labelled  comic.  He 
also  says,  in  the  article  I  am  now  discussing, 
that  Mr.  Shaw  has  the  reputation  of  deliberately 
saying  everything  which  his  hearers  do  not 
expect  him  to  say.  I  need  not  labour  the 
inconclusiveness  and  weakness  of  this,  because 
it  has  already  been  dealt  with  in  my  remarks 
on  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw.  Suffice  it  to  say  here 
that  the  only  serious  reason  which  I  can  imagine 
inducing  any  one  person  to  listen  to  any  other 
is,  that  the  first  person  looks  to  the  second 
person  with  an  ardent  faith  and  a  fixed  atten- 
tion, expecting  him  to  say  what  he  does  not 
expect  him  to  say.  It  may  be  a  paradox,  but 
that  is  because  paradoxes  are  true.  It  may  not 
be  rational,  but  that  is  because  rationalism  is 
wrong.     But  clearly  it  is  quite  true  that  when- 

225 


Heretics 


ever  we  go  to  hear  a  prophet  or  teacher  we  may 
or  may  not  expect  wit,  we  may  or  may  not 
expect  eloquence,  but  we  do  expect  what  we 
do  not  expect.  We  may  not  expect  the  true, 
we  may  not  even  expect  the  wise,  but  we  do 
expect  the  unexpected.  If  we  do  not  expect 
the  unexpected,  why  do  we  go  there  at  all  ?  If 
we  expect  the  expected,  why  do  we  not  sit  at 
home  and  expect  it  by  ourselves?  If  Mr. 
McCabe  means  merely  this  about  Mr.  Shaw, 
that  he  always  has  some  unexpected  app Jlica- 
tion  of  his  doctrine  to  give  to  those  who  listen 
to  him,  what  he  says  is  quite  true,  and  to  say  it 
is  only  to  say  that  Mr.  Shaw  is  an  original  man. 
But  if  he  means  that  Mr.  Shaw  has  ever  pro- 
fessed or  preached  any  doctrine  but  one,  and 
that  his  own,  then  what  he  says  is  not  true.  It 
is  not  my  business  to  defend  Mr.  Shaw;  as  has 
been  seen  already,  I  disagree  with  him  alto- 
gether. But  I  do  not  mind,  on  his  behalf, 
offering  in  this  matter  a  flat  defiance  to  all  his 
ordinary  opponents,  such  as  Mr.  McCabe.  I 
defy  Mr.  McCabe,  or  anybody  else,  to  mention 
one  single  instance  in  which  Mr.  Shaw  has,  for 
the  sake  of  wit  or  novelty,  taken  up  any  position 
which  was  not  directly  deducible  from  the  body 
of  his  doctrine  as  elsewhere  expressed.  I  have 
been,  I  am  happy  to  say,  a  tolerably  close  stu 

226 


J 


Mr.  McCahe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

dent  of  Mr.  Shaw's  utterances,  and  I  request 
Mr.  McCabe,  if  he  will  not  believe  that  I  mean 
anything  else,  to  believe  that  I  mean  this 
challenge. 

All  this,  however,  is  a  parenthesis.  The 
thing  with  which  I*  am  here  immediately  con- 
cerned is  Mr.  McCabe's  appeal  to  me  not  to  be 
so  frivolous.  Let  me  return  to  the  actual  text 
of  that  appeal.  There  are,  of  course,  a  great 
many  things  that  I  might  say  about  it  in  detail. 
But  I  may  start  with  saying  that  Mr.  McCabe 
is  in  error  in  supposing  that  the  danger  which 
I  anticipate  from  the  disappearance  of  religion 
is  the  increase  of  sensuality.  On  the  contrary, 
I  should  be  inclined  to  anticipate  a  decrease  in 
sensuality,  because  I  anticipate  a  decrease  in 
life.  I  do  not  think  that  under  modern  West- 
ern materialism  we  should  have  anarchy.  I 
doubt  whether  we  should  have  enough  indi- 
vidual valour  and  spirit  even  to  have  liberty. 
It  is  quite  an  old-fashioned  fallacy  to  suppose 
that  our  objection  to  scepticism  is  that  it  re- 
moves the  discipline  from  life.  Our  objection 
to  scepticism  is  that  it  removes  the  motive  power. 
Materialism  is  not  a  thing  which  destroys  mere 
restraint.  Materialism  itself  is  the  great  re- 
straint. The  McCabe  school  advocates  a  polit- 
ical liberty,  but  it  denies' spiritual  liberty.    That 

227 


Heretics 


is,  it  abolishes  the  laws  which  could  be  broken, 
and  substitutes  laws  that  cannot.  And  that  is 
the  real  slavery. 

The  truth  is  that  the  scientific  civilization  in 
which  Mr.  McCabe  believes  has  one  rather 
particular  defect;  it  is  perpetually  tending  to 
destroy  that  democracy  or  power  of  the  ordi- 
nary man  in  which  Mr.  McCabe  also  believes. 
Science  means  specialism,  and  specialism  means 
oligarchy.  If  you  once  establish  the  habit  of 
trusting  particular  men  to  produce  particular 
results  in  physics  or  astronomy,  you  leave  the 
door  open  for  the  equally  natural  demand  that 
you  should  trust  particular  men  to  do  particular 
things  in  government  and  the  coercing  of  men. 
If  you  feel  it  to  be  reasonable  that  one  beetle 
should  be  the  only  study  of  one  man,  and  that 
one  man  the  only  student  of  that  one  beetle,  it 
is  surely  a  very  harmless  consequence  to  go  on 
to  say  that  politics  should  be  the  only  study  of 
one  man,  and  that  one  man  the  only  student 
of  politics.  As  I  have  pointed  out  elsewhere  in 
this  book,  the  expert  is  more  aristocratic  than 
the  aristocrat,  because  the  aristocrat  is  only  the 
man  who  lives  well,  while  the  expert  is  the  man 
who  knows  better.  But  if  we  look  at  the 
progress  of  our  scientific  civilization  we  see  a 
gradual  increase  everywhere  of  the  specialist 

228 


Mr,  McCabe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

over  the  popular  function.  Once  men  sang 
together  round  a  table  in  chorus;  now  one  man 
sings  alone,  for  the  absurd  reason  that  he  can 
sing  better.  If  scientific  civilization  goes  on 
(which  is  most  improbable)  only  one  man  will 
laugh,  because  he. can  laugh  better  than  the 
rest. 

I  do  not  know  that  I  can  express  this  more 
shortly  than  by  taking  as  a  text  the  single  sen- 
tence of  Mr.  McCabe,  which  runs  as  follows: 
"The  ballets  of  the  Alhambra  and  the  fireworks 
of  the  Crystal  Palace  and  Mr.  Chesterton's 
Daily  News  articles  have  their  places  in  life," 
I  wish  that  my  articles  had  as  noble  a  place  as 
either  of  the  other  two  things  mentioned.  But 
let  us  ask  ourselves  (in  a  spirit  of  love,  as  Mr. 
Chadband  would  say),  what  are  the  ballets  of 
the  Alhambra?  The  ballets  of  the  Alhambra 
are  institutions  in  which  a  particular  selected 
row  of  persons  in  pink  go  through  an  operation 
known  as  dancing.  Now,  in  all  common- 
wealths dominated  by  a  religion  —  in  the 
Christian  commonwealths  of  the  Middle  Ages 
and  in  many  rude  societies  —  this  habit  of 
dancing  was  a  common  habit  with  everybody, 
and  was  not  necessarily  confined  to  a  profes- 
sional class.  A  person  could  dance  without 
being  a  dancer;  a  person  could  dance  without 

229 


Heretics 


being  a  specialist;  a  person  could  dance  with- 
out being  pink.  And,  in  proportion  as  Mr. 
McCabe's  scientific  civilization  advances  — 
that  is,  in  proportion  as  religious  civilization 
(or  real  civilization)  decays  —  the  more  and 
more  '^well  trained,"  the  more  and  more  pink, 
become  the  people  who  do  dance,  and  the  more 
and  more  numerous  become  the  people  who 
don't.  Mr.  McCabe  may  recognize  an  example 
of  what  I  mean  in  the  gradual  discrediting  in 
society  of  the  ancient  European  waltz  or  dance 
with  partners,  and  the  substitution  of  that 
horrible  and  degrading  oriental  interlude  which 
is  known  as  skirt-dancing.  That  is  the  whole 
essence  of  decadence,  the  effacement  of  five 
people  who  do  a  thing  for  fun  by  one  person 
who  does  it  for  money.  Now  it  follows,  there- 
fore, that  when  Mr.  McCabe  says  that  the 
ballets  of  the  Alhambra  and  my  articles  ^^have 
their  place  in  life,"  it  ought  to  be  pointed  out 
to  him  that  he  is  doing  his  best  to  create  a  world 
in  which  dancing,  properly  speaking,  will  have 
no  place  in  life  at  all.  He  is,  indeed,  trying  to 
create  a  world  in  which  there  will  be  no  life  for 
dancing  to  have  a  place  in.  The  very  fact  that 
Mr.  McCabe  thinks  of  dancing  as  a  thing  be- 
longing to  some  hired  women  at  the  Alhambra 
is  an  illustration  of  the  same  principle  by  which 

230 


Mr,  McCabe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

he  is  able  to  think  of  religion  as  a  thing  belong- 
ing to  some  hired  men  in  white  neckties.  Both 
these  things  are  things  which  should  not  be 
done  for  us,  but  by  us.  If  Mr.  McCabe  were 
really  religious  he  would  be  happy.  If  he  were 
really  happy  he  would  dance. 

Briefly,  we  may  put  the  matter  in  this  way. 
The  main  point  of  modern  life  is  not  that  the 
Alhambra  ballet  has  its  place  in  life.  The  main 
point,  the  main  enormous  tragedy  of  modern 
life,  is  that  Mr.  McCabe  has  not  his  place  in 
the  Alhambra  ballet.  The  joy  of  changing  and 
graceful  posture,  the  joy  of  suiting  the  swing  of 
music  to  the  swing  of  limbs,  the  joy  of  whirling 
drapery,  the  joy  of  standing  on  one  leg,  —  all 
these  should  belong  by  rights  to  Mr.  McCabe 
and  to  me;  in  short,  to  the  ordinary  healthy 
citizen.  Probably  we  should  not  consent  to  go 
through  these  evolutions.  But  that  is  because 
we  are  miserable  moderns  and  rationalists.  We 
do  not  merely  love  ourselves  more  than  we  love 
duty;  we  actually  love  ourselves  more  than  we 
love  joy. 

When,  therefore,  Mr.  McCabe  says  that  he 
gives  the  Alhambra  dances  (and  my  articles) 
their  place  in  life,  I  think  we  are  justified  in 
pointing  out  that  by  the  very  nature  of  the 
case  of  his  philosophy  and  of  his  favourite 

231 


Heretics 


civilization  he  gives  them  a  very  inadequate 
place.  For  (if  I  may  pursue  the  too  flattering 
parallel)  Mr.  McCabe  thinks  of  the  Alhambra 
and  of  my  articles  as  two  very  odd  and  absurd 
things,  which  some  special  people  do  (probably 
for  money)  in  order  to  amuse  him.  But  if  he 
had  ever  felt  himself  the  ancient,  sublime,  ele- 
mental, human  instinct  to  dance,  he  would  have 
discovered  that  dancing  is  not  a  frivolous  thing 
at  all,  but  a  very  serious  thing.  He  would  have 
discovered  that  it  is  the  one  grave  and  chaste 
and  decent  method  of  expressing  a  certain  class 
of  emotions.  And  similarly,  if  he  had  ever  had, 
as  Mr.  Shaw  and  I  have  had,  the  impulse  to 
what  he  calls  paradox,  he  would  have  discovered 
that  paradox  again  is  not  a  frivolous  thing,  but 
a  very  serious  thing.  He  would  have  found 
that  paradox  simply  means  a  certain  defiant 
joy  which  belongs  to  belief.  I  should  regard 
any  civilization  which  was  without  a  universal 
habit  of  uproarious  dancing  as  being,  from  the 
full  human  point  of  view,  a  defective  civiliza- 
tion. And  I  should  regard  any  mind  which 
had  not  got  the  habit  in  one  form  or  another 
of  uproarious  thinking  as  being,  from  the  full 
human  point  of  view,  a  defective  mind.  It  is 
vain  for  Mr.  McCabe  to  say  that  a  ballet  is  a 
part  of  him.    He  should  be  part  of  a  ballet, 

232 


Mr.  McCabe  and  a  Divine  Frivolity 

or  else  he  is  only  part  of  a  man.  It  is  in  vain 
for  him  to  say  that  he  is  "not  quarrelling  with 
the  importation  of  humour  into  the  contro- 
versy." He  ought  himself  to  be  importing 
humour  into  every  controversy;  for  unless  a 
man  is  in  part  a  humorist,  he  is  only  in  part  a 
man.  To  sum  up  the  whole  matter  very  simply, 
if  Mr.  McCabe  asks  me  why  I  import  frivolity 
into  a  discussion  of  the  nature  of  man,  I  answer, 
because  frivolity  is  a  part  of  the  nature  of  man. 
If  he  asks  me  why  I  introduce  what  he  calls 
paradoxes  into  a  philosophical  problem,  I  an- 
swer, because  all  philosophical  problems  tend  to 
become  paradoxical.  If  he  objects  to  my  treat- 
ing of  life  riotously,  I  reply  that  life  is  a  riot. 
And  I  say  that  the  Universe  as  I  see  it,  at  any 
rate,  is  very  much  more  like  the  fireworks  at 
the  Crystal  Palace  than  it  is  like  his  own 
philosophy.  About  the  whole  cosmos  there  is 
a  tense  and  secret  festivity  —  like  preparations 
for  Guy  Fawkes'  day.  Eternity  is  the  eve  of 
something.  I  never  look  up  at  the  stars  without 
feeling  that  they  are  the  fires  of  a  schoolboy's 
rocket,  fixed  in  their  everlasting  fall. 


233 


XVII  —  On  the  Wit  of  Whistler 

THAT  capable  and  ingenious  writer, 
Mr.  Arthur  Symons,  has  included  in 
a  book  of  essays  recently  published, 
I  believe,  an  apologia  for  ^^  London 
Nights,"  in  which  he  says  that  morality  should 
be  wholly  subordinated  to  art  in  criticism,  and 
he  uses  the  somewhat  singular  argument  that 
art  or  the  worship  of  beauty  is  the  same  in  all 
ages,  while  morality  differs  in  every  period  and 
in  every  respect.  He  appears  to  defy  his  critics 
or  his  readers  to  mention  any  permanent  feature 
or  quality  in  ethics.  This  is  surely  a  very 
curious  example  of  that  extravagant  bias  against 
morality  which  makes  so  many  ultra-modern 
aesthetes  as  morbid  and  fanatical  as  any  Eastern 
hermit.  Unquestionably  it  is  a  very  common 
phrase  of  modern  intellectualism  to  say  that 
the  morality  of  one  age  can  be  entirely  different 
to  the  morality  of  another.  And  like  a  great 
many  other  phrases  of  modem  intellectualism, 
it  means  literally  nothing  at  all.  If  the  two 
moralities  are  entirely  different,  why  do  you 
call  them  both  moralities?  It  is  as  if  a  man 
said,    ^^  Camels   in   various  places   are   totally 

234 


On  the  Wit  of  Whistler 

diverse;  some  have  six  legs,  some  have  none, 
some  have  scales,  some  have  feathers,  some 
have  horns,  some  have  wings,  some  are  green, 
some  are  triangular.  There  is  no  point  which 
they  have  in  common."  The  ordinary  man  of 
sense  would  reply,  **Then  what  makes  you  call 
them  all  camels?  What  do  you  mean  by  a 
camel?  How  do  you  know  a  camel  when  you 
see  one?''  Of  course,  there  is  a  permanent 
substance  of  morality,  as  much  as  there  is  a 
permanent  substance  of  art;  to  say  that  is  only 
to  say  that  morality  is  morality,  and  that  art 
is  art.  An  ideal  art  critic  would,  no  doubt, 
see  the  enduring  beauty  under  every  school; 
equally  an  ideal  moralist  would  see  the  enduring 
ethic  under  every  code.  But  practically  some 
of  the  best  Englishmen  that  ever  lived  could 
see  nothing  but  filth  and  idolatry  in  the  starry 
piety  of  the  Brahmin.  And  it  is  equally  true 
that  practically  the  greatest  group  of  artists 
that  the  world  has  ever  seen,  the  giants  of  the 
Renaissance,  could  see  nothing  but  barbarism 
in  the  ethereal  energy  of  Gothic. 

This  bias  against  morality  among  the  modern 
aesthetes  is  a  thing  very  much  paraded.  And 
yet  it  is  not  really  a  bias  against  morality;  it  is 
a  bias  against  other  people's  morality.  It  is 
generally  founded   on   a  very  definite   moral 

235 


Heretics 


preference  for  a  certain  sort  of  life,  pagan, 
plausible,  humane.  The  modem  aesthete,  wish- 
ing us  to  believe  that  he  values  beauty  more 
than  conduct,  reads  Mallarme,  and  drinks 
absinthe  in  a  tavern.  But  this  is  not  only  his 
favourite  kind  of  beauty;  it  is  also  his  favourite 
kind  of  conduct.  If  he  really  wished  us  to 
believe  that  he  cared  for  beauty  only,  he  ought 
to  go  to  nothing  but  Wesleyan  school  treats, 
and  paint  the  sunlight  in  the  hair  of  the  Wes- 
leyan babies.  He  ought  to  read  nothing  but 
very  eloquent  theological  sermons  by  old-fash- 
ioned Presbyterian  divines.  Here  the  lack  of 
all  possible  moral  sympathy  would  prove  that 
his  interest  was  purely  verbal  or  pictorial,  as  it 
is;  in  all  the  books  he  reads  and  writes  he  clings 
to  the  skirts  of  his  own  morality  and  his  own 
immorality.  The  champion  of  Vart  pour  Part 
is  always  denouncing  Ruskin  for  his  moralizing. 
If  he  were  really  a  champion  of  Part  pour  Part, 
he  would  be  always  insisting  on  Ruskin  for  his 
style. 

The  doctrine  of  the  distinction  between  art 
and  morality  owes  a  great  part  of  its  success 
to  art  and  morality  being  hopelessly  mixed  up 
in  the  persons  and  performances  of  its  greatest 
exponents.  Of  this  lucky  contradiction  the 
very  incarnation  was  Whistler.    No  man  ever 

236 


On  the  Wit  of  Whistler 

preached  the  impersonality  of  art  so  well;  no 
man  ever  preached  the  impersonality  of  art  so 
personally.  For  him  pictures  had  nothing  to 
do  with  the  problems  of  character;  but  for  all 
his  fiercest  admirers  his  character  was,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  far  more  interesting  than  his 
pictures.  He  gloried  in  standing  as  an  artist 
apart  from  right  and  wrong.  But  he  succeeded 
by  talking  from  morning  till  night  about  his 
rights  and  about  his  wrongs.  His  talents  were 
many,  his  virtues,  it  must  be  confessed,  not 
many,  beyond  that  kindness  to  tried  friends, 
on  which  many  of  his  biographers  insist,  but 
which  surely  is  a  quality  of  all  sane  men,  of 
pirates  and  pickpockets;  beyond  this,  his  out- 
standing virtues  limit  themselves  chiefly  to  two 
admirable  ones  —  courage  and  an  abstract  love 
of  good  work.  Yet  I  fancy  he  won  at  last  more 
by  those  two  virtues  than  by  all  his  talents. 
A  man  must  be  something  of  a  moralist  if  he 
is  to  preach,  even  if  he  is  to  preach  unmorality. 
Professor  Walter  Raleigh,  in  his  *^In  Memo- 
riam:  James  McNeill  Whistler,"  insists,  truly 
enough,  on  the  strong  streak  of  an  eccentric 
honesty  in  matters  strictly  pictorial,  which  ran 
through  his  complex  and  slightly  confused  char- 
acter. "He  would  destroy  any  of  his  works 
rather  than  leave  a  careless  or  inexpressive 

237 


Heretics 


touch  within  the  limits  of  the  frame.  He  would 
begin  again  a  hundred  times  over  rather  than 
attempt  by  patching  to  make  his  work  seem 
better  than  it  was." 

No  one  will  blame  Professor  Raleigh,  who 
had  to  read  a  sort  of  funeral  oration  over 
Whistler  at  the  opening  of  the  Memorial  Ex- 
hibition, if,  finding  himself  in  that  position,  he 
confined  himself  mostly  to  the  merits  and  the 
stronger  qualities  of  his  subject.  We  should 
naturally  go  to  some  other  type  of  composition 
for  a  proper  consideration  of  the  weaknesses  of 
Whistler.  But  these  must  never  be  omitted 
from  our  view  of  him.  Indeed,  the  truth  is 
tha't  it  was  not  so  much  a  question  of  the  weak- 
nesses of  Whistler  as  of  the  intrinsic  and  pri- 
mary weakness  of  Whistler.  He  was  one  of 
those  people  who  live  up  to  their  emotional 
incomes,  who  are  always  taut  and  tingling  with 
vanity.  Hence  he  had  no  strength  to  spare; 
hence  he  had  no  kindness,  no  geniality;  for 
geniality  is  almost  definable  as  strength  to  spare. 
He  had  no  god-like  carelessness ;  he  never  forgot 
himself;  his  whole  life  was,  to  use  his  own 
expression,  an  arrangement.  He  went  in  for 
*'the  art  of  living"  —  a  miserable  trick.  In  a 
word,  he  v/as  a  great  artist;  but  emphatically 
not  a  great  man.     In  this  connection  I  must 

238 


On  the  Wit  of  Whistler 


differ  strongly  with  Professor  Raleigh  upon 
what  is,  from  a  superficial  literary  point  of  view, 
one  of  his  most  effective  points.  He  compares 
Whistler's  laughter  to  the  laughter  of  another 
man  who  was  a  great  man  as  well  as  a  great 
artist.  ^^His  attitude  to  the  public  was  exactly 
the  attitude  taken  up  by  Robert  Browning,  who 
suffered  as  long  a  period  of  neglect  and  mistake, 
in  those  lines  of  ^The  Ring  and  the  Book'  — 

"  *  Well,  British  Public,  ye  who  Hke  me  not, 

(God  love  you!)  and  will  have  your  proper  laugh 
At  the  dark  question;  laugh  it!  I'd  laugh  first."' 

"Mr.  Whistler,"  adds  Professor  Raleigh, 
** always  laughed  first."  The  truth  is,  I  believe, 
that  Whistler  never  laughed  at  all.  There  was 
no  laughter  in  his  nature;  because  there  was 
no  thoughtlessness  and  self-abandonment,  no 
humility.  I  cannot  understand  anybody  read- 
ing "The  Gentle  Art  of  Making  Enemies"  and 
thinking  that  there  is  any  laughter  in  the  wit. 
His  wit  is  a  torture  to  him.  He  twists  himself 
into  arabesques  of  verbal  felicity;  he  is  full  of 
a  fierce  carefulness;  he  is  inspired  with  the 
complete  seriousness  of  sincere  malice.  He 
hurts  himself  to  hurt  his  opponent.  Browning 
did  laugh,  because  Browning  did  not  care; 
Browning  did  not  care,  because  Browning  was 

239 


Heretics 


a  great  man.  And  when  Browning  said  in 
brackets  to  the  simple,  sensible  people  who  did 
not  like  his  books,  *^God  love  you!''  he  was  not 
sneering  in  the  least.  He  was  laughing  —  that 
is  to  say,  he  meant  exactly  what  he  said. 

There  are  three  distinct  classes  of  great 
satirists  who  are  also  great  men  —  that  is  to 
say,  three  classes  of  men  who  can  laugh  at 
something  without  losing  their  souls.  The 
satirist  of  the  first  type  is  the  man  who,  first  of 
all,  enjoys  himself,  and  then  enjoys  his  enemies. 
In  this  sense  he  loves  his  enemy,  and  by  a 
kind  of  exaggeration  of  Christianity  he  loves 
his  enemy  the  more  the  more  he  becomes  an 
enemy.  He  has  a  sort  of  overwhelming  and 
aggressive  happiness  in  his  assertion  of  anger; 
his  curse  is  as  human  as  a  benediction.  Of  this 
type  of  satire  the  great  example  is  Rabelais. 
This  is  the  first  typical  example  of  satire,  the 
satire  which  is  voluble,  which  is  violent,  which 
is  indecent,  but  which  is  not  malicious.  The 
satire  of  Whistler  was  not  this.  He  was  never 
in  any  of  his  controversies  simply  happy;  the 
proof  of  it  is  that  he  never  talked  absolute 
nonsense.  There  is  a  second  type  of  mind 
which  produces  satire  with  the  quality  of  great- 
ness. That  is  embodied  in  the  satirist  whose 
passions  are  released  and  let  go  by  some  intol- 

240 


On  the  Wit  of  Whistler 


erable  sense  of  wrong.  He  is  maddened  by  the 
sense  of  men  being  maddened;  his  tongue  be- 
comes an  unruly  member,  and  testifies  against 
all  mankind.  Such  a  man  was  Swift,  in  whom 
the  saeva  indignatio  was  a  bitterness  to  others, 
because  it  was  a  bitterness  to  himself.  Such  a 
satirist  Whistler  was  not.  He  did  not  laugh 
because  he  was  happy,  like  Rabelais.  But 
neither  did  he  laugh  because  he  was  unhappy, 
like  Swift. 

The  third  type  of  great  satire  is  that  in  which 
the  satirist  is  enabled  to  rise  superior  to  his 
victim  in  the  only  serious  sense  which  supe- 
riority can  bear,  in  that  of  pitying  the  sinner  and 
respecting  the  man  even  while  he  satirises  both. 
Such  an  achievement  can  be  found  in  a  thing 
like  Pope's  "Atticus,''  a  poem  in  which  the 
satirist  feels  that  he  is  satirising  the  weaknesses 
which  belong  specially  to  literary  genius.  Con- 
sequently he  takes  a  pleasure  in  pointing  out 
his  enemy's  strength  before  he  points  out  his 
weakness.  That  is,  perhaps,  the  highest  and 
most  honourable  form  of  satire.  That  is  not 
the  satire  of  Whistler.  He  is  not  full  of  a 
great  sorrow  for  the  wrong  done  to  human 
nature;  for  him  the  wrong  is  altogether  done  to 
himself. 

He  was  not  a  great  personality,  because  he 

241 


Heretics 


thought  so  much  about  himself.  And  the  case 
is  stronger  even  than  that.  He  was  sometimes 
not  even  a  great  artist,  because  he  thought  so 
much  about  art.  Any  man  with  a  vital  knowl- 
edge of  the  human  psychology  ought  to  have 
the  most  profound  suspicion  of  anybody  who 
claims  to  be  an  artist,  and  talks  a  great  deal 
about  art.  Art  is  a  right  and  human  thing, 
like  walking  or  saying  one's  prayers;  but  the 
moment  it  begins  to  be  talked  about  very 
solemnly,  a  man  may  be  fairly  certain  that  the 
thing  has  come  into  a  congestion  and  a  kind  of 
difficulty. 
4  The  artistic  temperament  is  a  disease  that 
afflicts  amateurs.  It  is  a  disease  which  arises 
from  men  not  having  sufficient  power  of  ex- 
pression to  utter  and  get  rid  of  the  element  of 
art  in  their  being.  It  is  healthful  to  every  sane 
man  to  utter  the  art  within  him;  it  is  essential 
to  every  sane  man  to  get  rid  of  the  art  within 
him  at  all  costs.  Artists  of  a  large  and  whole- 
some vitality  get  rid  of  their  art  easily,  as  they 
breathe  easily,  or  perspire  easily.  But  in  artists 
of  less  force,  the  thing  becomes  a  pressure,  and 
produces  a  definite  pain,  which  is  called  the 
artistic  temperament.  Thus,  very  great  artists 
are  able  to  be  ordinary  men  —  men  like  Shake- 
speare or  Browning.    There  are  many  real  trag- 

242 


On  the  Wit  of  Whistler 


i 


edies  of  the  artistic  temperament,  tragedies  of 
vanity  or  violence  or  fear.  But  the  great  tragedy 
of  the  artistic  temperament  is  that  it  cannot 
produce  any  art. 

Whistler  could  produce  art;  and  in  so  far  he 
was  a  great  man.  But  he  could  not  forget  art; 
and  in  so  far  he  was  only  a  man  with  the 
artistic  temperament.  There  can  be  no  stronger 
manifestation  of  the  man  who  is  a  really  great 
artist  than  the  fact  that  he  can  dismiss  the  sub- 
ject of  art;  that  he  can,  upon  due  occasion,  wish 
art  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  Similarly,  we 
should  always  be  much  more  inclined  to  trust 
a  solicitor  who  did  not  talk  about  conveyancing 
over  the  nuts  and  wine.  What  we  really  desire 
of  any  man  conducting  any  business  is  that  the 
full  force  of  an  ordinary  man  should  be  put 
into  that  particular  study.  We  do  not  desire 
that  the  full  force  of  that  study  should  be  put 
into  an  ordinary  man.  We  do  not  in  the  least 
wish  that  our  particular  law-suit  should  pour 
its  energy  into  our  barrister's  games  with  his 
children,  or  rides  on  his  bicycle,  or  medita  ions 
on  the  morning  star.  But  we  do,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  desire  that  his  games  with  his  children, 
and  his  rides  on  his  bicycle,  and  his  meditations 
on  the  morning  star  should  pour  something  of 
their  energy  into  our  law-suit.    We  do  desire 

243 


Heretics 


that  if  he  has  gained  any  especial  lung  devel- 
opment from  the  bicycle,  or  any  bright  and 
pleasing  metaphors  from  the  morning  star,  that 
they  should  be  placed  at  our  disposal  in  that 
particular  forensic  controversy.  In  a  word,  we 
are  very  glad  that  he  is  an  ordinary  man,  since 
that  may  help  him  to  be  an  exceptional  lawyer. 

Whistler  never  ceased  to  be  an  artist.  As 
Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  pointed  out  in  one  of  his 
extraordinarily  sensible  and  sincere  critiques, 
Whistler  really  regarded  Whistler  as  his  greatest 
work  of  art.  The  white  lock,  the  single  eye- 
glass, the  remarkable  hat  —  these  were  much 
dearer  to  him  than  any  nocturnes  or  arrange- 
ments that  he  ever  threw  off.  He  could  throw 
off  the  nocturnes;  for  some  mysterious  reason 
he  could  not  throw  off  the  hat.  He  never  threw 
off  from  himself  that  disproportionate  accumu- 
lation of  aestheticism  which  is  the  burden  of  the 
amateur. 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  this  is  the  real 
explanation  of  the  thing  which  has  puzzled  so 
many  dilettante  critics,  the  problem  of  the  ex- 
treme ordinariness  of  the  behaviour  of  so  many 
great  geniuses  in  history.  Their  behaviour  was 
so  ordinary  that  it  was  not  recorded;  hence  it 
was  so  ordinary  that  it  seemed  mysterious. 
Hence  people  say  that  Bacon  wrote  Shakespeare. 

244 


On  the  Wit  of  Whistler 


The  modern  artistic  temperament  cannot  under- 
stand how  a  man  who  could  write  such  lyrics 
as  Shakespeare  wrote,  could  be  as  keen  as 
Shakespeare  was  on  business  transactions  in  a 
little  town  in  Warwickshire.  The  explanation 
is  simple  enough;  it  is  that  Shakespeare  had  a 
real  lyrical  impulse,  wrote  a  real  lyric,  and  so 
got  rid  of  the  impulse  and  went  about  his  busi- 
ness. Being  an  artist  did  not  prevent  him  from 
being  an  ordinary  man,  any  more  than  being 
a  sleeper  at  night  or  being  a  diner  at  dinner 
prevented  him  from  being  an  ordinary  man. 

All  very  great  teachers  and  leaders  have  had 
this  habit  of  assuming  their  point  of  view  to  be 
one  which  was  human  and  casual,  one  which 
would  readily  appeal  to  every  passing  man.  If 
a  man  is  genuinely  superior  to  his  fellows  the 
first  thing  that  he  believes  in  is  the  equality  of 
man.  We  can  see  this,  for  instance,  in  that 
strange  and  innocent  rationality  with  which 
Christ  addressed  any  motley  crowd  that  hap- 
pened to  stand  about  Him.  ^^What  man  of 
you  having  a  hundred  sheep,  and  losing  one, 
would  not  leave  the  ninety  and  nine  in  the 
wilderness,  and  go  after  that  which  was  lost?'' 
Or,  again,  ''What  man  of  you  if  his  son  ask  for 
bread  will  he  give  him  a  stone,  or  if  he  ask  for 
a  fish  will  he  give  him  a  serpent  ?  "    This  plain- 

245 


Heretics 


ness,  this  almost  prosaic  camaraderie,  is  the  note 
of  all  very  great  minds. 

To  very  great  minds  the  things  on  which 
men  agree  are  so  immeasurably  more  important 
than  the  things  on  which  they  differ,  that  the 
latter,  for  all  practical  purposes,  disappear. 
They  have  too  much  in  them  of  an  ancient 
laughter  even  to  endure  to  discuss  the  difference 
between  the  hats  of  two  men  who  were  both 
born  of  a  woman,  or  between  the  subtly  varied 
cultures  of  two  men  who  have  both  to  die. 
The  first-rate  great  man  is  equal  with  other 
men,  like  Shakespeare.  The  second-rate  great 
man  is  on  his  knees  to  other  men,  like  Whitman. 
The  third-rate  great  man  is  superior  to  other 
men,  like  Whistler. 


246 


XVIII — The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

TO  say  that  a  man  is  an  idealist  is 
merely  to  say  that  he  is  a  man;  but, 
nevertheless,  it  might  be  possible  to 
effect  some  valid  distinction  between 
one  kind  of  idealist  and  another.  One  possible 
distinction,  for  instance,  could  be  effected  by 
saying  that  humanity  is  divided  into  conscious 
idealists  and  unconscious  idealists.  In  a  similar 
way,  humanity  is  divided  into  conscious  ritual- 
ists and  unconscious  ritualists.  The  curious 
thing  is,  in  that  example  as  in  others,  that  it  is 
the  conscious  ritualism  which  is  comparatively 
simple,  the  unconscious  ritual  which  is  really 
heavy  and  complicated.  The  ritual  which  is 
comparatively  rude  and  straightforward  is  the 
ritual  which  people  call  *^  ritualistic."  It  con- 
sists of  plain  things  like  bread  and  wine  and 
fire,  and  men  falling  on  their  faces.  But  the 
ritual  which  is  really  complex,  and  many  col- 
oured, and  elaborate,  and  needlessly  formal,  is 
I  the  ritual  which  people  enact  without  knowing 
it.  It  consists  not  of  plain  things  like  wine 
and  fire,  but  of  really  peculiar,  and  local,  and 
exceptional,  and  ingenious  things  —  things  like 
door-mats,  and  door-knockers,  and  electric  bells, 
I  247 


Heretics 


and  silk  hats,  and  white  ties,  and  shiny  cards, 
and  confetti.  The  truth  is  that  the  modern 
man  scarcely  ever  gets  back  to  very  old  and 
simple  things  except  when  he  is  performing 
some  religious  mummery.  The  modem  man 
can  hardly  get  away  from  ritual  except  by  en- 
tering a  ritualistic  church.  In  the  case  of  these 
old  and  mystical  formalities  we  can  at  least  say 
that  the  ritual  is  not  mere  ritual;  that  the  sym- 
bols employed  are  in  most  cases  symbols  which 
belong  to  a  primary  human  poetry.  The  most 
ferocious  opponent  of  the  Christian  ceremonials 
must  admit  that  if  Catholicism  had  not  insti- 
tuted the  bread  and  wine,  somebody  else  would 
most  probably  have  done  so.  Any  one  with  a 
poetical  instinct  will  admit  that  to  the  ordinary 
human  instinct  bread  symbolizes  something 
which  cannot  very  easily  be  symbolized  other- 
wise ;  that  wine,  to  the  ordinary  human  instinct, 
symbolizes  something  which  cannot  very  easily 
be  symbolized  otherwise.  But  white  ties  in  the 
evening  are  ritual,  and  nothing  else  but  ritual. 
No  one  would  pretend  that  white  ties  in  the 
evening  are  primary  and  poetical.  Nobody 
would  maintain  that  the  ordinary  human  in- 
stinct would  in  any  age  or  country  tend  to 
symbolize  the  idea  of  evening  by  a  white  necktie. 
Rather,  the  ordinary  human  instinct  would,  I 

248 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

imagine,  tend  to  symbolize  evening  by  cravats 
with  some  of  the  colours  of  the  sunset,  not  white 
neckties,  but  tawny  or  crimson  neckties  —  neck- 
ties of  purple  or  olive,  or  some  darkened  gold. 
Mr.  J.  A.  Kensit,  for  example,  is  under  the  im- 
pression that  he  is  not  a  ritualist.  But  the  daily 
life  of  Mr.  J.  A.  Kensit,  like  that  of  any  ordinary 
modern  man,  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  one  con- 
tinual and  compressed  catalogue  of  mystical 
mummery  and  flummery.  To  take  one  instance 
out  of  an  inevitable  hundred:  I  imagine  that 
Mr.  Kensit  takes  off  his  hat  to  a  lady;  and  what 
can  be  more  solemn  and  absurd,  considered  in 
the  abstract,  than  symbolizing  the  existence  of 
the  other  sex  by  taking  off  a  portion  of  your 
clothing  and  waving  it  in  the  air?  This,  I 
repeat,  is  not  a  natural  and  primitive  symbol,  like 
fire  or  food.  A  man  might  just  as  well  have  to 
take  off  his  waistcoat  to  a  lady;  and  if  a  man,  by 
the  social  ritual  of  his  civilization,  had  to  take  off 
his  waistcoat  to  a  lady,  every  chivalrous  and 
sensible  man  would  take  off  his  waistcoat  to  a 
lady.  In  short,  Mr.  Kensit,  and  those  who  agree 
with  him,  may  think,  and  quite  sincerely  think, 
that  men  give  too  much  incense  and  ceremonial 
to  their  adoration  of  the  other  world.  But  no- 
body thinks  that  he  can  give  too  much  incense 
and  ceremonial  to  the  adoration  of  this  world. 

349 


Heretics 


All  men,  then,  are  ritualists,  but  are  either 
conscious  or  unconscious  ritualists.  The  con- 
scious ritualists  are  generally  satisfied  with  a  few 
very  simple  and  elementary  signs;  the  uncon- 
scious ritualists  are  not  satisfied  with  anything 
short  of  the  whole  of  human  life,  being  almost 
insanely  ritualistic.  The  first  is  called  a  rit- 
ualist because  he  invents  and  remembers  one 
rite;  the  other  is  called  an  anti-ritualist  because 
he  obeys  and  forgets  a  thousand.  And  a  some- 
what similar  distinction  to  this  which  I  have 
drawn  with  some  unavoidable  length,  between 
the  conscious  ritualist  and  the  unconscious  rit- 
ualist, exists  between  the  conscious  idealist  and 
the  unconscious  idealist.  It  is  idle  to  inveigh 
against  cynics  and  materialists  —  there  are  no 
cynics,  there  are  no  materialists.  Every  man 
is  idealistic;  only  it  so  often  happens  that  he, 
has  the  wrong  ideal.  Every  man  is  incurably 
sentimental;  but,  unfortunately,  it  is  so  often  a 
false  sentiment.  When  we  talk,  for  instance, 
of  some  unscrupulous  commercial  figure,  and 
say  that  he  would  do  anything  for  money,  we 
use  quite  an  inaccurate  expression,  and  we 
slander  him  very  much.  He  would  not  do 
anything  for  money.  -He  would  do  some  things 
for  money;  he  would  sell  his  soul  for  money, 
for  instance;  and,  as  Mirabeau  humorously  said, 

250 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

he  would  be  quite  wise  "to  take  money  for 
muck."  He  would  oppress  humanity  for  money; 
but  then  it  happens  that  humanity  and  the  soul 
are  not  things  that  he  believes  in;  they  are  not 
his  ideals.  But  he  has  his  own  dim  and  delicate 
ideals;  and  he  would  not  violate  these  for 
money.  He  would  not  drink  out  of  the  soup- 
tureen,  for  money.  He  would  not  wear  his 
coat-tails  in  front,  for  money.  He  would  not 
spread  a  report  that  he  had  softening  of  the 
brain,  for  money.  In  the  actual  practice  of 
life  we  find,  in  the  matter  of  ideals,  exactly 
what  we  have  already  found  in  the  matter  of 
ritual.  We  find  that  while  there  is  a  perfectly 
genuine  danger  of  fanaticism  from  the  men  who 
have  unworldly  ideals,  the  permanent  and  urgent 
danger  of  fanaticism  is  from  the  men  who  have 
worldly  ideals. 

People  who  say  that  an  ideal  is  a  dangerous 
thing,  that  it  deludes  and  intoxicates,  are  per- 
fectly right.  But  the  ideal  which  intoxicates 
most  is  the  least  idealistic  kind  of  ideal.  The 
ideal  which  intoxicates  least  is  the  very  ideal 
ideal;  that  sobers  us  suddenly,  as  all  heights 
and  precipices  and  great  distances  do.  Granted 
that  it  is  a  great  evil  to  mistake  a  cloud  for  a 
cape;  still,  the  cloud,  which  can  be  most  easily 
mistaken  for  a  cape,  is  the  cloud  that  is  nearest 

251 


Heretics 


the  earth.  Similarly,  we  may  grant  that  it  may 
be  dangerous  to  mistake  an  ideal  for  something 
practical.  But  we  shall  still  point  out  that,  in 
this  respect,  the  most  dangerous  ideal  of  all  is 
the  ideal  which  looks  a  little  practical.  It  is 
difficult  to  attain  a  high  ideal;  consequently,  it 
is  almost  impossible  to  persuade  ourselves  that 
we  have  attained  it.  But  it  is  easy  to  attain  a 
low  ideal;  consequently,  it  is  easier  still  to  per- 
suade ourselves  that  we  have  attained  it  when 
we  have  done  nothing  of  the  kind.  To  take  a 
random  example.  It  might  be  called  a  high 
ambition  to  wish  to  be  an  archangel;  the  man 
who  entertained  such  an  ideal  would  very  pos- 
sibly exhibit  asceticism,  or  even  frenzy,  but  not, 
I  think,  delusion.  He  would  not  think  he  was 
an  archangel,  and  go  about  flapping  his  hands 
under  the  impression  that  they  were  wings. 
But  suppose  that  a  sane  man  had  a  low  ideal; 
suppose  he  wished  to  be  a  gentleman.  Any  one 
who  knows  the  world  knows  that  in  nine  weeks 
he  would  have  persuaded  himself  that  he  was  a 
gentleman;  and  this  being  manifestly  not  the 
case,  the  result  will  be  very  real  and  practical 
dislocations  and  calamities  in  social  life.  It  is 
not  the  wild  ideals  which  wreck  the  practical 
world;  it  is  the  tame  ideals. 
The  matter  may,  perhaps,  be  illustrated  by 
252 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

a  parallel  from  our  modem  politics.  When 
men  tell  us  that  the  old  Liberal  politicians  of 
the  type  of  Gladstone  cared  only  for  ideals,  of 
course,  they  are  talking  nonsense  —  they  cared 
for  a  great  many  other  things,  including  votes. 
And  when  men  tell  us  that  modern  politicians 
of  the  type  of  Mr.  Chamberlain  or,  in  another 
way.  Lord  Rosebery,  care  only  for  votes  or  for 
material  interest,  then  again  they  are  talking 
nonsense  —  these  men  care  for  ideals  like  all 
other  men.  But  the  real  distinction  which  may 
be  drawn  is  this,  that  to  the  older  politician  the 
ideal  was  an  ideal,  and  nothing  else.  To  the 
new  politician  his  dream  is  not  only  a  good 
dream,  it  is  a  reality.  The  old  politician  would 
have  said,  '^It  would  be  a  good  thing  if  there 
were  a  Republican  Federation  dominating  the 
world."  But  the  modern  politician  does  not 
say,  ^^It  would  be  a  good  thing  if  there  were  a 
British  Imperialism  dominating  the  world."  He 
says,  '^  It  is  a  good  thing  that  there  is  a  British 
Imperialism  dominating  the  world;"  whereas 
clearly  there  is  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  old 
Liberal  would  say  ^^  There  ought  to  be  a  good 
Irish  government  in  Ireland."  But  the  ordinary 
modem  Unionist  does  not  say,  "There  ought 
to  be  a  good  English  government  in  Ireland." 
He  says,  ''There  is  a  good  English  government 

353 


Heretics 


in  Ireland;"  which  is  absurd.     In  short,  the 
modern  politicians  seem  to  think  that  a  man 
becomes  practical  merely  by  making  assertions 
entirely  about  practical  things.    Apparently,  a 
delusion  does  not  matter  as  long  as  it  is  "a, 
materialistic  delusion.     Instinctively  most  of  us 
feel  that,  as  a  practical  matter,  even  the  con- 
trary is  true.     I  certainly  would  much  rather 
j  share  my  apartments  with  a  gentleman  who 
I  thought  he  was  God  than  with  a  gentleman  who 
'  thought  he  was  a  grasshopper.    To  be  continu- 
ally haunted  by  practical  images  and  practical 
problems,  to  be  constantly  thinking  of  things 
as  actual,  as  urgent,  as  in  process  of  completion 
—  these  things  do  not  prove  a  man  to  be  prac- 
tical; these  things,  indeed,  are  among  the  most 
ordinary  signs  of  ^  lunatic.     That  our  modern 
statesmen  are  materialistic  is  nothing  against 
their  being  also  morbid.     Seeing  angels  in  a 
I  vision  may  make  a  man  a  supernaturalist  to 
I  excess.     But  merely  seeing  snakes  in  delirium 
tremens  does  not  make  him  a  naturalist. 

And  when  we  come  actually  to  examine  the 
main  stock  notions  of  our  modem  practical 
politicians,  we  find  that  those  main  stock 
notions  are  mainly  delusions.  A  great  many 
instances  might  be  given  of  the  fact.  We  might 
take,  for  example,  the  case  of  that  strange  class 

254 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation  • 

of  notions  which  underlie  the  word  "union," 
and  all  the  eulogies  heaped  upon  it.  Of  course, 
union  is  no  more  a  good  thing  in  itself  than 
separation  is  a  good  thing  in  itself.  To  have  a 
party  in  favour  of  union  and  a  party  in  favour 
of  separation,  is  as  absurd  as  to  have  a  party  in  / 
favour  of  going  upstairs  and  a  party  in  favour/ 
of  going  downstairs.  The  question  is  not  \ 
whether  we  go  up  or  down  stairs,  but  where 
we  are  going  to,  and  what  we  are  going  for? 
Union  is  strength;  union  is  also  weakness.  It 
is  a  good  thing  to  harness  two  horses  to  a  cart; 
but  it  is  not  a  good  thing  to  try  and  turn  two 
hansom  cabs  into  one  four-wheeler.  Turning 
ten  nations  into  one  empire  may  happen  to  be 
as  feasible  as  turning  ten  shillings  into  one 
half-sovereign.  Also  it  may  happen  to  be  as 
preposterous  as  turning  ten  terriers  into  one 
mastiff.  The  question  in  all  cases  is  not  a 
question  of  union  or  absence  of  union,  but  of 
identity  or  absence  of  identity.  Owing  to  cer- 
tain historical  and  moral  causes,  two  nations 
may  be  so  united  as  upon  the  whole  to  help 
each  other.  Thus  England  and  Scotland  pass 
their  time  in  paying  each  other  compliments; 
but  their  energies  and  atmospheres  run  distinct 
and  parallel,  and  consequently  do  not  clash. 
Scotland  continues  to  be  educated  and  Calvin- 

255 


Heretics 


istic;  England  continues  to  be  uneducated  and 
happy.     But  owing  to  certain  other  moral  and 
certain  other  political  causes,  two  nations  may- 
be so  united  as  only  to  hamper  each  other; 
their  lines  do  clash  and  do  not  run  parallel. 
Thus,  for  instance,  England  and  Ireland  are 
so  united  that  the  Irish  can  sometimes  rule 
England,  but  can  never  rule  Ireland.    The  edu- 
cational systems,  including  the  last  Education 
Act,  are  here,  as  in  the  case  of  Scotland,  a  very 
good  test  of  the  matter.     The  overwhelming 
majority  of  Irishmen  believe  in  a  strict  Catholi- 
cism ;  the  overwhelming  majority  of  Englishmen 
believe  in  a  vague  Protestantism.     The  Irish 
party  in  the  Parliament  of  Union  is  just  large 
enough  to  prevent  the  English  education  being 
indefinitely  Protestant,  and  just  small  enough 
to  prevent  the  Irish  education  being  definitely 
Catholic.    Here  we  have  a  state  of  things  which 
no  man  in  his  senses  would  ever  dream  of 
wishing  to  continue  if  he  had  not  been  bewitched 
by  the  sentimentalism  of  the  mere  word  ^^  union.'' 
This  example  of  union,  however,  is  not  the 
example  which  I  propose  to  take  of  the  in- 
grained futility  and  deception  underlying  all  the 
assumptions  of  the  modem  practical  politician. 
I  wish  to  speak  especially  of  another  and  much 
more  general  delusion.    It  pervades  the  minds 

256 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

and  speeches  of  all  the  practical  men  of  all 
parties;  and  it  is  a  childish  blunder  built  upon 
a  single  false  metaphor.  I  refer  to  the  universal 
modern  talk  about  young  nations  and  new 
nations;  about  America  being  young,  about 
New  Zealand  being  new.  The  whole  thing  is 
a  trick  of  words.  America  is  not  young,  New 
Zealand  is  not  new.  It  is  a  very  discussable 
question  whether  they  are  not  both  much  older 
than  England  or  Ireland. 

Of  course  we  may  use  the  metaphor  of  youth 
about  America  or  the  colonies,  if  we  use  it 
strictly  as  implying  only  a  recent  origin.  But 
if  we  use  it  (as  we  do  use  it)  as  implying  vigour, 
or  vivacity,  or  crudity,  or  inexperience,  or  hope, 
or  a  long  life  before  them,  or  any  of  the  romantic 
attributes  of  youth,  then  it  is  surely  as  clear  as 
daylight  that  we  are  duped  by  a  stale  figure  of 
speech.  We  can  easily  see  the  matter  clearly 
by  applying  it  to  any  other  institution  parallel 
to  the  institution  of  an  independent  nationality. 
If  a  club  called  ''The  Milk  and  Soda  League" 
(let  us  say)  was  set  up  yesterday,  as  I  have  no 
doubt  it  was,  then,  of  course,  "The  Milk  and 
Soda  League"  is  a  young  club  in  the  sense  that 
it  was  set  up  yesterday,  but  in  no  other  sense. 
It  may  consist  entirely  of  moribund  old  gentle- 
men.   It  may  be  moribund  itself.    We  may 

257 


Heretics 


call  it  a  young  club,  in  the  light  of  the  fact  that 
it  was  founded  yesterday.  We  may  also  call 
it  a  very  old  club  in  the  light  of  the  fact  that  it 
will  most  probably  go  bankrupt  to-morrow. 
All  this  appears  very  obvious  when  we  put  it  in 
this  form.  Any  one  who  adopted  the  young- 
community  delusion  with  regard  to  a  bank  or  a 
butcher's  shop  would  be  sent  to  an  asylum. 
But  the  whole  modern  political  notion  that 
America  and  the  colonies  must  be  very  vigorous 
because  they  are  very  new,  rests  upon  no  better 
foundation.  That  America  was  founded  long 
after  England  does  not  make  it  even  in  the 
faintest  degree  more  probable  that  America  will 
not  perish  a  long  time  before  England.  That 
England  existed  before  her  colonies  does  not 
make  it  any  the  less  likely  that  she  will  exist 
after  her  colonies.  And  when  we  look  at  the 
actual  history  of  the  world,  we  find  that  great 
European  nations  almost  invariably  have  sur- 
vived the  vitality  of  their  colonies.  When  we 
look  at  the  actual  history  of  the  world,  we  find 
that  if  there  is  a  thing  that  is  bom  old  and  dies 
young,  it  is  a  colony.  The  Greek  colonies  went 
to  pieces  long  before  the  Greek  civilization. 
The  Spanish  colonies  have  gone  to  pieces  long 
before  the  nation  of  Spain  — nor  does  there 
seem  to  be  any  reason  to  doubt  the  possibility 

258 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

or  even  the  probability  of  the  conclusion  that 
the  colonial  civilization,  which  owes  its  origin 
to  England,  will  be  much  briefer  and  much  less 
vigorous  than  the  civilization  of  England  itself. 
The  English  nation  will  still  be  going  the  way 
of  all  European  nations  when  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  has  gone  the  way  of  all  fads.  Now,  of 
course,  the  interesting  question  is,  have  we,  in 
the  case  of  America  and  the  colonies,  any  real 
evidence  of  a  moral  and  intellectual  youth  as 
opposed  to  the  indisputable  triviality  of  a  merely 
chronological  youth?  Consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, we  know  that  we  have  no  such  evi- 
dence, and  consciously  or  unconsciously,  there- 
fore, we  proceed  to  make  it  up.  Of  this  pure 
and  placid  invention,  a  good  example,  for  in 
stance,  can  be  found  in  a  recent  poem  of  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling's.  Speaking  of  the  English 
people  and  the  South  African  War,  Mr.  Kipling 
says  that  *'we  fawned  on  the  younger  nations 
for  the  men  that  could  shoot  and  ride."  Some 
people  considered  this  sentence  insulting.  All 
that  I  am  concerned  with  at  present  is  the 
evident  fact  that  it  is  not  true.  The  colonies 
provided  very  useful  volunteer  troops,  but  they 
did  not  provide  the  best  troops,  nor  achieve 
the  most  successful  exploits.  The  best  work 
in  the  war  on  the  English  side  was  done,  as 

259 


Heretics 


might  have  been  expected,  by  the  best  EngHsh 
regiments.  The  men  who  could  shoot  and  ride 
were  not  the  enthusiastic  corn  merchants  from 
Melbourne,  any  more  than  they  were  the  en- 
thusiastic clerks  from  Cheapside.  The  men 
who  could  shoot  and  ride  were  the  men  who 
had  been  taught  to  shoot  and  ride  in  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  standing  army  of  a  great  Euro- 
pean power.  Of  course,  the  colonials  are  as 
brave  and  athletic  as  any  other  average  white 
men.  Of  course,  they  acquitted  themselves 
with  reasonable  credit.  All  I  have  here  to 
indicate  is  that,  for  the  purposes  of  this  theory 
of  the  new  nation,  it  is  necessary  to  maintain 
that  the  colonial  forces  were  more  useful  or 
more  heroic  than  the  gunners  at  Colenso  or  the 
Fighting  Fifth.  And  of  this  contention  there 
is  not,  and  never  has  been,  one  stick  or  straw 
of  evidence. 

A  similar  attempt  is  made,  and  with  even  less 
success,  to  represent  the  literature  of  the  colonies 
as  something  fresh  and  vigorous  and  important. 
The  imperialist  magazines  are  constantly  spring- 
ing upon  us  some  genius  from  Queensland  or 
Canada,  through  whom  we  are  expected  to 
smell  the  odours  of  the  bush  or  the  prairie. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  any  one  who  is  even  slightly 
interested  in  literature  as  such  (and  I,  for  one, 

260 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

confess  that  I  am  only  slightly  interested  in 
literature  as  such),  will  freely  admit  that  the 
stories  of  these  geniuses  smell  of  nothing  but 
printer's  ink,  and  that  not  of  first-rate  quality. 
By  a  great  effort  of  Imperial  imagination  the 
generous  English  people  reads  into  these  works 
a  force  and  a  novelty.  But  the  force  and  the 
novelty  are  not  in  the  new  writers;  the  force 
and  the  novelty  are  in  the  ancient  heart  of  the 
English.  Anybody  who  studies  them  impar- 
tially will  know  that  the  first-rate  writers  of 
the  colonies  are  not  even  particularly  novel  in 
their  note  and  atmosphere,  are  not  only  not 
producing  a  new  kind  of  good  literature,  but  are 
not  even  in  any  particular  sense  producing  a 
new  kind  of  bad  literature.  The  first-rate 
writers  of  the  new  countries  are  really  almost 
exactly  like  the  second-rate  writers  of  the  old 
countries.  Of  course  they  do  feel  the  mystery 
of  the  wilderness,  the  mystery  of  the  bush,  for 
all  simple  and  honest  men  feel  this  in  Mel- 
bourne, or  Margate,  or  South  St.  Pancras.  But 
when  they  write  most  sincerely  and  most  suc- 
cessfully, it  is  not  with  a  background  of  the 
mystery  of  the  bush,  but  with  a  background, 
expressed  or  assumed,  of  our  own  romantic 
cockney  civilization.  What  really  moves  their 
souls  with  a  kindly  terror  is  not  the  mystery  of 

261 


Heretics 


the  wilderness,  but  the  Mystery  of  a  Hansom 
Cab. 

Of  course  there  are  some  exceptions  to  this 
generahzation.  The  one  really  arresting  ex- 
ception is  Olive  Schreiner,  and  she  is  quite  as 
certainly  an  exception  that  proves  the  rule. 
Olive  Schreiner  is  a  fierce,  brilliant,  and  realistic 
novelist;  but  she  is  all  this  precisely  because 
she  is  not  English  at  all.  Her  tribal  kinship  is 
with  the  country  of  Teniers  and  Maarten  Maar- 
tens  —  that  is,  with  a  country  of  realists.  Her 
literary  kinship  is  with  the  pessimistic  fiction  of 
the  continent;  with  the  novelists  whose  very 
pity  is  cruel.  Olive  Schreiner  is  the  one  English 
colonial  who  is  not  conventional,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  South  Africa  is  the  one  English 
colony  which  is  not  English,  and  probably  never 
will  be.  And,  of  course,  there  are  individual 
exceptions  in  a  minor  way.  I  remember  in  par- 
ticular some  Australian  tales  by  Mr.  Mcllwain 
which  were  really  able  and  effective,  and  which, 
for  that  reason,  I  suppose,  are  not  presented  to 
the  public  with  blasts  of  a  trumpet.  But  my 
general  contention,  if  put  before  any  one  with 
a  love  of  letters,  will  not  be  disputed  if  it  is 
understood.  It  is  not  the  truth  that  the  colonial 
civilization  as  a  whole  is  giving  us,  or  shows 
any  signs  of  giving  us,  a  literature  which  will 

262 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

startle  and  renovate  our  own.  It  may  be  a 
very  good  thing  for  us  to  have  an  affectionate 
illusion  in  the  matter;  that  is  quite  another 
affair.  The  colonies  may  have  given  England 
a  new  emotion;  I  only  say  that  they  have  not 
given  the  world  a  new  book. 

Touching  these  English  colonies,  I  do  not 
wish  to  be  misunderstood.  I  do  not  say  of 
them  or  of  America  that  they  have  not  a  future, 
or  that  they  will  not  be  great  nations.  I  merely 
deny  the  whole  established  modern  expression 
about  them.  I  deny  that  they  are  *  destined" 
to  a  future.  I  deny  that  they  are  *' destined" 
to  be  great  nations.  I  deny  (of  course)  that 
any  human  thing  is  destined  to  be  anything. 
All  the  absurd  physical  metaphors,  such  as 
youth  and  age,  living  and  dying,  are,  when  ap 
plied  to  nations,  but  pseudo-scientific  attempts 
to  conceal  from  men  the  awful  liberty  of  their 
lonely  souls. 

In  the  case  of  America,  indeed,  a  warning  to 
this  effect  is  instant  and  essential.  America, 
of  course,  like  every  other  human  thing,  can  in 
spiritual  sense  live  or  die  as  much  as  it  chooses. 
But  at  the  present  moment  the  matter  which 
America  has  very  seriously  to  consider  is  not 
how  near  it  is  to  its  birth  and  beginning,  but 
how  near  it  may  be  to  its  end.    It  is  only  a 

263 


Heretics 


verbal  question  whether  the  American  civiliza- 
tion is  young;  it  may  become  a  very  practical 
and  urgent  question  whether  it  is  dying.  When 
once  we  have  cast  aside,  as  we  inevitably  have 
after  a  moment's  thought,  the  fanciful  physical 
metaphor  involved  in  the  word  ^^ youth,"  what 
serious  evidence  have  we  that  America  is  a  fresh 
force  and  not  a  stale  one  ?  It  has  a  great  many 
people,  like  China ;  it  has  a  great  deal  of  money, 
like  defeated  Carthage  or  dying  Venice.  It  is 
full  of  bustle  and  excitability,  like  Athens  after 
its  ruin,  and  all  the  Greek  cities  in  their  decline. 
It  is  fond  of  new  things;  but  the  old  are  always 
fond  of  new  things.  Young  men  read  chron- 
icles, but  old  men  read  newspapers.  It  admires 
strength  and  good  looks;  it  admires  a  big  and 
barbaric  beauty  in  its  women,  for  instance ;  but 
so  did  Rome  when  the  Goth  was  at  the  gates. 
All  these  are  things  quite  compatible  with  fun- 
damental tedium  and  decay.  There  are  three 
main  shapes  or  symbols  in  which  a  nation  can 
show  itself  essentially  glad  and  great  —  by  the 
heroic  in  government,  by  the  heroic  in  arms, 
and  by  the  heroic  in  art.  Beyond  government, 
which  is,  as  it  were,  the  very  shape  and  body  of 
a  nation,  the  most  significant  thing  about  any 
citizen  is  his  artistic  attitude  towards  a  holiday 
and  his  moral  attitude  towards  a  fight  —  that 
/  264 


The  Fallacy  of  the  Young  Nation 

is,  his  way  of  accepting  life  and  his  way  of 
accepting  death. 

Subjected  to  these  eternal  tests,  America  does 
not  appear  by  any  means  as  particularly  fresh 
or  untouched.  She  appears  with  all  the  weak- 
ness and  weariness  of  modern  England  or  of 
any  other  Western  power.  In  her  politics  she 
has  broken  up  exactly  as  England  has  broken 
up,  into  a  bewildering  opportunism  and  insin- 
cerity. In  the  matter  of  war  and  the  national 
attitude  towards  war,  her  resemblance  to  Eng- 
land is  even  more  manifest  and  melancholy. 
It  may  be  said  with  rough  accuracy  that  there 
are  three  stages  in  the  life  of  a  strong  people. 
First,  it  is  a  small  power,  and  fights  small 
powers.  Then  it  is  a  great  power,  and  fights 
great  powers.  Then  it  is  aj|B|kpower,  and 
fights  small  powers,  but  pre^^^^at  they  are 
great  powers,  in  order  to  rela^^pRie  ashes  of 
its  ancient  emotion  and  vanity .^^fter  that,  the 
next  step  is  to  become  a  small  power  itself. 
England  exhibited  this  symptom  of  decadence 
very  badly  in  the  war  with  the  Transvaal;  but 
America  e^Mked  it  worse  in  the  war  with 
Spain.  Th^P^as  exhibited  more  sharply  and 
absurdly  than  anywhere  else  the  ironic  contrast 
between  the  very  careless  choice  of  a  strong  line 
and  the  very  careful  choice  of  a  weak  enemy. 

265 


Heretics 


America  added  to  all  her  other  late  Roman  or 
Byzantine  elements  the  element  of  the  Cara- 
callan  triumph,  the  triumph  over  nobody. 

But  when  we  come  to  the  last  test  of  nation- 
ality, the  test  of  art  and  |letters,  the  case  is 
almost  terrible.  The  English  colonies  have 
produced  no  great  artists;  and  that  fact  may 
prove  that  they  are  still  full  of  silent  possibilities 
and  reserve  force.  But  America  has  produced 
great  artists.  And  that  'fact  most  certainly 
proves  that  she  is  full  of  a  fine  futility  and  the 
end  of  all  things.  Whatever  the  American  men 
of  genius  are,  they  are  not  young  gods  making 
a  young  world.  Is  the  art  of  Whistler  a  brave, 
barbaric  art,  happy  and  headlong?  Does  Mr. 
Henry  James  infect  us  with  the  spirit  of  a 
schoolboy?  ^^^he  colonies  have  not  spoken, 
and  they  ^j^^^fe  Their  silence  may  be  the 
silence  of  tll^^HR*n.  But  out  of  America  has 
come  a  sweetflK  startling  cry,  as  unmistakable 
as  the  cry  of  a  dying  man. 


366 


XIX  —  Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 

ODD  ideas  are  entertained  in  our  time 
about  the  real  nature  of  the  doctrine 
of  human  fraternity.  The  real  doc- 
trine is  something  which  we  do  not, 
with  all  our  modern  humanitarianism,  very 
clearly  understand,  much  less  very  closely  prac- 
tise. There  is  nothing,  for  instance,  particu- 
larly undemocratic  about  kicking  your  butler 
downstairs.  It  may  be  wrong,  but  it  is  not 
unfraternal.  In  a  certain  sense,  the  blow  or 
kick  may  be  considered  as  a  confession  of 
equality:  you  are  meeting  your  butler  body 
to  body;  you  are  almost  according  him  the 
privilege  of  the  duel.  There  is  nothing  un- 
democratic, though  there  may  be  something 
unreasonable,  in  expecting  a  great  deal  from 
the  butler,  and  being  filled  with  a  kind  of 
frenzy  of  surprise  ^when  he  falls  short  of  the 
divine  stature.  The  thing  which  is  really  un- 
democi^tic  and  unfraternal  is  not  to  expect  the 
butler  to  be  more  or  less  divine.  The  thing 
which  is  really  undemocratic  and  unfraternal 
is  to  say,  as  so  many  modem  humanitarians 
say,  ^'Of  course  one  must  make  allowances  for 

267 


Heretics 


those  on  a  lower  plane."  All  things  considered, 
indeed,  it  may  be  said,  without  undue  exaggera- 
tion, that  the  really  undemocratic  and  unfra- 
ternal  thing  is  the  common  practice  of  not 
kicking  the  butler  downstairs. 

It  is  only  because  such  a  vast  section  of  the 
modern  world  is  out  of  sympathy  with  the  serious 
democratic  sentiment  that  this  statement  will 
seem  to  many  to  be  lacking  in  seriousness. 
Democracy  is  not  philanthropy;  it  is  not  even 
altruism  or  social  reform.  Democracy  is  not 
founded  on  pity  for  the  common  man;  democ- 
racy is  founded  on  reverence  for  the  common 
man,  or,  if  you  will,  even  on  fear  of  him.  It 
does  not  champion  man  because  man  is  so 
miserable,  but  because  man  is  so  sublime.  It 
does  not  object  so  much  to  the  ordinary  man 
being  a  slave  as  to  his  not  being  a  king,  for  its 
dream  is  always  the  dream  of  the  first  Roman 
republic,  a  nation  of  kings. 

Next  to  a  genuine  republic,  the  most  demo- 
cratic thing  in  the  world  is  a  hereditary  despot- 
ism. I  mean  a  despotism  in  which  there  is 
absolutely  no  trace  whatever  of  any  nonsense 
about  intellect  or  special  fitness  for  the  post. 
Rational  despotism  —  that  is,  selective  despot- 
ism —  is  always  a  curse  to  mankind,  because 
with  that  you  have  the  ordinary  man  misunder- 

268 


Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 

stood  and  misgoverned  by  some  prig  who  has  no 
brotherly  respect  for  him  at  all.  But  irrational 
despotism  is  always  democratic,  because  it  is 
the  ordinary  man  enthroned.  The  worst  form 
of  slavery  is  that  which  is  called  Caesarism,  or 
the  choice  of  some  bold  or  brilliant  man  as 
despot  because  he  is  suitable.  For  that  means 
that  men  choose  a  representative,  not  because 
he  represents  them,  but  because  he  does  not. 
Men  trust  an  ordinary  man  like  George  III. 
or  William  IV.  because  they  are  themselves 
ordinary  men  and  understand  him.  Men  trust 
an  ordinary  man  because  they  trust  themselves. 
But  men  trust  a  great  man  because  they  do  not 
trust  themselves.  And  hence  the  worship  of 
great  men  always  appears  in  times  of  weakness 
and  cowardice;  we  never  hear  of  great  men 
until  the  time  when  all  other  men  are  small. 

Hereditary  despotism  is,  then,  in  essence  and 
sentiment  democratic  because  it  chooses  from 
mankind  at  random.  If  it  does  not  declare  that 
every  man  may  rule,  it  declares  the  next  most 
democratic  thing;  it  declares  that  any  man  may 
rule.  Hereditary  aristocracy  is  a  far  worse  and 
more  dangerous  thing,  because  the  numbers 
and  multiplicity  of  an  aristocracy  make  it  some- 
times possible  for  it  to  figure  as  an  aristocracy 
of  intellect.    Some  of  its  members  will  pre- 

269 


Heretics 


sumably  have  brains,  and  thus  they,  at  any  rate, 
will  be  an  intellectual  aristocracy  within  the 
social  one.  They  will  rule  the  aristocracy  by 
virtue  of  their  intellect,  and  they  will  rule  the 
country  by  virtue  of  their  aristocracy.  Thus  a 
double  falsity  will  be  set  up,  and  millions  of 
the  images  of  God,  who,  fortunately  for  their 
wives  and  families,  are  neither  gentlemen  nor 
clever  men,  will  be  represented  by  a  man  like 
Mr.  Balfour  or  Mr.  Wyndham,  because  he  is 
too  gentlemanly  to  be  called  merely  clever,  and 
just  too  clever  to  be  called  merely  a  gentleman. 
But  even  an  hereditary  aristocracy  may  exhibit, 
by  a  sort  of  accident,  from  time  to  time  some  of 
the  basically  democratic  quality  which  belongs 
to  a  hereditary  despotism.  It  is  amusing  to 
think  how  much  conservative  ingenuity  has  been 
wasted  in  the  defence  of  the  House  of  Lords 
by  men  who  were  desperately  endeavouring  to 
prove  that  the  House  of  Lords  consisted  of 
clever  men.  There  is  one  really  good  defence 
of  the  House  of  Lords,  though  admirers  of  the 
peerage  are  strangely  coy  about  using  it;  and 
that  is,  that  the  House  of  Lords,  in  its  full  and 
proper  strength,  consists  of  stupid  men.  It 
really  would  be  a  plausible  defence  of  that 
otherwise  indefensible  body  to  point  out  that 
the  clever  men  in  the  Commons,  who  owed  their 

27Q 


Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 


power  to  cleverness,  ought  in  the  last  resort  to 
be  checked  by  the  average  man  in  the  Lords, 
who  owed  their  power  to  accident.  Of  course, 
there  would  be  many  answers  to  such  a  conten- 
tion, as,  for  instance,  that  the  House  of  Lords 
is  largely  no  longer  a  House  of  Lords,  but  a 
House  of  tradesmen  and  financiers,  or  that  the 
bulk  of  the  commonplace  nobility  do  not  vote, 
and  so  leave  the  chamber  to  the  prigs  and  the 
specialists  and  the  mad  old  gentlemen  with 
hobbies.  But  on  some  occasions  the  House  of 
Lords,  even  under  all  these  disadvantages,  is  in 
some  sense  representative.  When  all  the  peers 
flocked  together  to  vote  against  Mr.  Gladstone's 
second  Home  Rule  Bill,  for  instance,  those  who 
said  that  the  peers  represented  the  English 
people,  were  perfectly  right.  All  those  dear  old 
men  who  happened  to  be  born  peers  were  at 
that  moment,  and  upon  that  question,  the  pre- 
cise counterpart  of  all  the  dear  old  men  who 
happened  to  be  born  paupers  or  middle-class 
gentlemen.  That  mob  of  peers  did  really  rep- 
resent the  English  people  —  that  is  to  say,  it 
was  honest,  ignorant,  vaguely  excited,  almost 
unanimous,  and  obviously  wrong.  Of  course, 
rational  democracy  is  better  as  an  expression 
of  the  public  will  than  the  haphazard  hereditary 
method.  While  we  are  about  having  any  kind 
271 


Heretics 


of  democracy,  let  it  be  rational  democracy.  But 
if  we  are  to  have  any  kind  of  oligarchy,  let  it 
be  irrational  oligarchy.  Then  at  least  we  shall 
be  ruled  by  men. 

But  the  thing  which  is  really  required  for 
the  proper  working  of  democracy  is  not  merely 
the  democratic  system,  or  even  the  democratic 
philosophy,  but  the  democratic  emotion.  The 
democratic  emotion,  like  most  elementary  and 
indispensable  things,  is  a  thing  difficult  to  de- 
scribe at  any  time.  But  it  is  peculiarly  difficult 
to  describe  it  in  our  enlightened  age,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  it  is  peculiarly  difficult  to 
find  it.  It  is  a  certain  instinctive  attitude  which 
feels  the  things  in  which  all  men  agree  to  be 
imspeakably  important,  and  all  the  things  in 
which  they  differ  (such  as  mere  brains)  to  be 
almost  unspeakably  unimportant.  The  nearest 
approach  to  it  in  our  ordinary  life  would  be  the 
promptitude  with  which  we  should  consider 
mere  humanity  in  any  circumstance  of  shock 
or  death.  We  should  say,  after  a  somewhat 
disturbing  discovery,  "There  is  a  dead  man 
under  the  sofa."  We  should  not  be  likely  to 
say,  "There  is  a  dead  man  of  considerable 
personal  refinement  under  the  sofa."  We 
should  say,  "A  woman  has  fallen  into  the 
water."    We  should  not  say,  "A  highly  edu- 

272 


Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 

cated  woman  has  fallen  into  the  water."  No- 
body would  say,  '^  There  are  the  remains  of  a 
clear  thinker  in  your  back  garden."  Nobody 
would  say,  "Unless  you  hurry  up  and  stop  him, 
a  man  with  a  very  fine  ear  for  music  will  have 
jumped  off  that  cliff."  But  this  emotion,  which 
all  of  us  have  in  connection  with  such  things  as 
birth  and  death,  is  to  some  people  native  and 
constant  at  all  ordinary  times  and  in  all  ordi- 
nary places.  It  was  native  to  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi.  It  was  native  to  Walt  Whitman.  In 
this  strange  and  splendid  degree  it  cannot  be 
expected,  perhaps,  to  pervade  a  whole  com- 
monwealth or  a  whole  civilization;  but  one 
commonwealth  may  have  it  much  more  than 
another  commonwealth,  one  civilization  much 
more  than  another  civilization.  No  community, 
perhaps,  ever  had  it  so  much  as  the  early  Fran- 
ciscans. No  community,  perhaps,  ever  had  it 
so  little  as  ours. 

Everything  in  our  age  has,  when  carefully 
examined,  this  fundamentally  undemocratic 
quality.  In  religion  and  morals  we  should 
admit,  in  the  abstract,  that  the  sins  of  the 
educated  classes  were  as  great  as,  or  perhaps 
greater  than,  the  sins  of  the  poor  and  ignorant. 
But  in  practice  the  great  difference  between  the 
mediaeval  ethics  and  ours  is  that  ours  concen- 

273 


Heretics 


trate  attention  on  the  sins  which  are  the  sins  of 
the  ignorant,  and  practically  deny  that  the  sins 
which  are  the  sins  of  the  educated  are  sins  at 
all.  We  are  always  talking  about  the  sin  of 
intemperate  drinking,  because  it  is  quite  obvious 
that  the  poor  have  it  more  than  the  rich.  But 
we  are  always  denying  that  there  is  any  such 
thing  as  the  sin  of  pride,  because  it  would  be 
quite  obvious  that  the  rich  have  it  more  than 
the  poor.  We  are  always  ready  to  make  a 
saint  or  prophet  of  the  educated  man  who  goes 
into  cottages  to  give  a  little  kindly  advice  to  the 
uneducated.  But  the  mediaeval  idea  of  a  saint 
or  prophet  was  something  quite  different.  The 
mediaeval  saint  or  prophet  was  an  uneducated 
man  who  walked  into  grand  houses  to  give  a 
little  kindly  advice  to  the  educated.  The  old 
tyrants  had  enough  insolence  to  despoil  the 
poor,  but  they  had  not  enough  insolence  to 
preach  to  them.  It  was  the  gentleman  who 
oppressed  the  slums;  but  it  was  the  slums  that 
admonished  the  gentleman.  And  just  as  we 
are  undemocratic  in  faith  and  morals,  so  we 
are,  by  the  very  nature  of  our  attitude  in  such 
matters,  undemocratic  in  the  tone  of  our  prac- 
tical politics.  It  is  a  sufficient  proof  that  we 
are  not  an  essentially  democratic  state  that  we 
J  are  always  wondering  what  we  shall  do  with 

274 


Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 

the  poor.  If  we  were  democrats,  we  should  be 
wondering  what  the  poor  will  do  with  us.  With 
us  the  governing  class  is  always  saying  to  itself, 
"What  laws  shall  we  make?''  In  a  purely 
democratic  state  it  would  be  always  saying, 
*^What  laws  can  we  obey?'*  A  purely  demo- 
cratic state  perhaps  there  has  never  been.  But 
even  the  feudal  ages  were  in  practice  thus  far 
democratic,  that  every  feudal  potentate  knew 
that  any  laws  which  he  made  would  in  all 
probability  return  upon  himeelf.  His  feathers 
might  be  cut  off  for  breaking  a  sumptuary  law. 
His  head  might  be  cut  off  for  high  treason. 
But  the  modem  laws  are  almost  always  laws 
made  to  affect  the  governed  class,  but  not  the 
governing.  We  have  public-house  licensing 
laws,  but  not  sumptuary  laws.  That  is  to  say, 
we  have  laws  against  the  festivity  and  hospi- 
tality of  the  poor,  but  no  laws  against  the 
festivity  and  hospitality  of  the  rich.  We  have 
laws  against  blasphemy  —  that  is,  against  a 
kind  of  coarse  and  offensive  speaking  in  which 
nobody  but  a  rough  and  obscure  man  would 
be  likely  to  indulge.  But  we  have  no  laws 
against  heresy  —  that  is,  against  the  intellectual 
poisoning  of  the  whole  people,  in  which  only  a 
prosperous  and  prominent  man  would  be  likely 
to  be  successful.    The  evil  of  aristocracy  is  not 

275 


Heretics 


that  it  necessarily  leads  to  the  infliction  of  bad 
things  or  the  suffering  of  sad  ones;  the  evil  of 
aristocracy  is  that  it  places  everything  in  the 
hands  of  a  class  of  people  who  can  always 
inflict  what  they  can  never  suffer.  Whether 
what  they  inflict  is,  in  their  intention,  good  or 
bad,  they  become  equally  frivolous.  The  case 
against  the  governing  class  of  modern  England 
is  not  in  the  least  that  it  is  selfish;  if  you  like, 
you  may  call  the  English  oligarchs  too  fantas- 
tically unselfish.  The  case  against  them  simply 
is  that  when  they  legislate  for  all  men,  they 
always  omit  themselves. 

We  are  undemocratic,  then,  in  our  religion, 
as  is  proved  by  our  efforts  to  "raise"  the  poor. 
We  are  undemocratic  in  our  government,  as  is 
proved  by  our  innocent  attempt  to  govern  them 
well.  But  above  all  we  are  undemocratic  in 
our  literature,  as  is  proved  by  the  torrent  of 
novels  about  the  poor  and  serious  studies  of  the 
poor  which  pour  from  our  publishers  every 
month.  And  the  more  "modem"  the  book 
is  the  more  certain  it  is  to  be  devoid  of  demo- 
cratic sentiment. 

A  poor  man  is  a  man  who  has  not  got  much 
money.  This  may  seem  a  simple  and  unneces- 
sary description,  but  in  the  face  of  a  great 
mass  of  modem  fact  and  fiction,  it  seems  very 

276 


Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 


necessary  indeed;  most  of  our  realists  and  so- 
ciologists talk  about  a  poor  man  as  if  he  were 
an  octopus  or  an  alligator.  There  is  no  more 
need  to  study  the  psychology  of  poverty  than 
to  study  the  psychology  of  bad  temper,  or  the 
psychology  of  vanity,  or  the  psychology  of 
animal  spirits.  A  man  ought  to  know  some- 
thing of  the  emotions  of  an  insulted  man,  not 
by  being  insulted,  but  simply  by  being  a  man. 
And  he  ought  to  know  something  of  the  emo- 
tions of  a  poor  man,  not  by  being  poor,  but 
simply  by  being  a  man.  Therefore,  in  any 
writer  who  is  describing  poverty,  my  first  objec- 
tion to  him  will  be  that  he  has  studied  his 
subject.    A  democrat  would  have  imagined  it. 

A  great  many  hard  things  have  been  said 
about  religious  slumming  and  political  or  social 
slumming,  but  surely  the  most  despicable  of  all 
is  artistic  slumming.  The  religious  teacher  is 
at  least  supposed  to  be  interested  in  the  coster- 
monger  because  he  is  a  man;  the  politician  is 
in  some  dim  and  perverted  sense  interested  in 
the  costermonger  because  he  is  a  citizen;  it  is 
only  the  wretched  writer  who  is  interested  in  the 
costermonger  merely  because  he  is  a  coster- 
monger. Nevertheless,  so  long  as  he  is  merely 
seeking  impressions,  or  in  other  words  copy, 
his  trade,  though  dull,  is  honest.    But  when  he 

277 


Heretics 


endeavours  to  represent  that  he  is  describing 
the  spiritual  core  of  a  costermonger,  his  dim 
vices  and  his  delicate  virtues,  then  we  must 
object  that  his  claim  is  preposterous;  we  must 
remind  him  that  he  is  a  journalist  and  nothing 
else.  He  has  far  less  psychological  authority- 
even  than  the  foolish  missionary.  For  he  is 
in  the  literal  and  derivative  sense  a  journalist, 
while  the  missionary  is  an  etemalist.  The  mis- 
sionary at  least  pretends  to  have  a  version  of 
the  man's  lot  for  all  time;  the  journalist  only 
pretends  to  have  a  version  of  it  from  day  to  day. 
The  missionary  comes  to  tell  the  poor  man  that 
he  is  in  the  same  condition  with  all  men. 
The  journalist  comes  to  tell  other  people  how 
different  the  poor  man  is  from  everybody  else. 

If  the  modern  novels  about  the  slums,  such 
as  novels  of  Mr.  Arthur  Morrison,  or  the  ex- 
ceedingly able  novels  of  Mr.  Somerset  Maug- 
ham, are  intended  to  be  sensational,  I  can  only 
say  that  that  is  a  noble  and  reasonable  object, 
and  that  they  attain  it.  A  sensation,  a  shock 
to  the  imagination,  like  the  contact  with  cold 
water,  is  always  a  good  and  exhilarating  thing; 
and,  undoubtedly,  men  will  always  seek  this 
sensation  (among  other  forms)  in  the  form  of 
the  study  of  the  strange  antics  of  remote  or 
alien   peoples.    In   the   twelfth   century   men 

278 


Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 

obtained  this  sensation  by  reading  about 
dog-headed  men  in  Africa.  In  the  twentieth 
century  they  obtained  it  by  reading  about 
pig-headed  Boers  in  Africa.  The  men  of  the 
twentieth  century  were  certainly,  it  must  be 
admitted,  somewhat  the  more  credulous  of  the 
two.  For  it  is  not  recorded  of  the  men  in  the 
twelfth  century  that  they  organized  a  sanguinary 
crusade  solely  for  the  purpose  of  altering  the 
singular  formation  of  the  heads  of  the  Africans. 
But  it  may  be,  and  it  may  even  legitimately  be, 
that  since  all  these  monsters  have  faded  from 
the  popular  mythology,  it  is  necessary  to  have  in 
our  fiction  the  image  of  the  horrible  and  hairy 
East-ender,  merely  to  keep  alive  in  us  a  fearful 
and  childlike  wonder  at  external  peculiarities. 
But  the  Middle  Ages  (with  a  great  deal  more 
common  sense  than  it  would  now  be  fashionable 
to  admit)  regarded  natural  history  at  bottom 
rather  as  a  kind  of  joke;  they  regarded  the 
soul  as  very  important.  Hence,  while  they  had 
a  natural  history  of  dog-headed  men,  they  did 
not  profess  to  have  a  psychology  of  dog-headed 
men.  They  did  not  profess  to  mirror  the  mind 
of  a  dog-headed  man,  to  share  his  tenderest 
secrets,  or  mount  with  his  most  celestial  musings. 
They  did  not  write  novels  about  the  semi- 
canine  creature,  attributing  to  him  all  the  oldest 

279 


Heretics 


morbidities  and  all  the  newest  fads.  It  is  per- 
missible to  present  men  as  monsters  if  we  wish 
to  make  the  reader  jump ;  and  to  make  anybody- 
jump  is  always  a  Christian  act.  But  it  is  not 
permissible  to  present  men  as  regarding  them- 
selves as  monsters,  or  as  making  themselves 
jump.  To  summarize,  our  slum  fiction  is  quite 
defensible  as  aesthetic  fiction ;  it  is  not  defensible 
as  spiritual  fact. 

One  enormous  obstacle  stands  in  the  way  of 
its  actuality.  The  men  who  write  it,  and  the 
men  who  read  it,  are  men  of  the  middle  classes 
or  the  upper  classes;  at  least,  of  those  who  are 
loosely  termed  the  educated  classes.  Hence, 
the  fact  that  it  is  the  life  as  the  refined  man 
sees  it  proves  that  it  cannot  be  the  life  as  the 
unrefined  man  lives  it.  Rich  men  write  stories 
about  poor  men,  and  describe  them  as  speaking 
with  a  coarse,  or  heavy,  or  husky  enunciation. 
But  if  poor  men  wrote  novels  about  you  or  me 
they  would  describe  us  as  speaking  with  some 
absurd  shrill  and  affected  voice,  such  as  we  only 
hear  from  a  duchess  in  a  three-act  farce.  The 
slum  novelist  gains  his  whole  effect  by  the  fact 
that  some  detail  is  strange  to  the  reader;  but 
that  detail  by  the  nature  of  the  case  cannot  be 
strange  in  itself.  It  cannot  be  strange  to  the 
soul  which  he  is  professing  to  study.    The  slum 

280 


Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 

novelist  gains  his  effects  by  describing  the  same 
grey  mist  as  draping  the  dingy  factory  and  the 
dingy  tavern.  But  to  the  man  he  is  supposed 
to  be  studying  there  must  be  exactly  the  same 
difference  between  the  factory  and  the  tavern 
that  there  is  to  a  middle-class  man  between  a 
late  night  at  the  office  and  a  supper  at  Pagani's. 
The  slum  novelist  is  content  with  pointing  out 
that  to  the  eye  of  his  particular  class  a  pickaxe 
looks  dirty  and  a  pewter  pot  looks  dirty.  But 
the  man  he  is  supposed  to  be  studying  sees  the 
difference  between  them  exactly  as  a  clerk  sees 
the  difference  between  a  ledger  and  an  edition 
de  luxe.  The  chiaroscuro  of  the  life  is  inevi- 
tably lost;  for  to  us  the  high  lights  and  the 
shadows  are  a  light  grey.  But  the  high  lights 
and  the  shadows  are  not  a  light  grey  in  that 
life  any  more  than  in  any  other.  The  kind 
of  man  who  could  really  express  the  pleasures 
of  the  poor  would  be  also  the  kind  of  man 
who  could  share  them.  In  short,  these  books 
are  not  a  record  of  the  psychology  of  poverty. 
They  are  a  record  of  the  psychology  of  wealth 
and  culture  when  brought  in  contact  with 
poverty.  They  are  not  a  description  of  the 
state  of  the  slums.  They  are  only  a  very  dark 
and  dreadful  description  of  the  state  of  the 
slummers. 

281 


Heretics 


One  might  give  innumerable  examples  of  the 
essentially  unsympathetic  and  unpopular  quality 
of  these  realistic  writers.  But  perhaps  the  sim- 
plest and  most  obvious  example  with  which  we 
could  conclude  is  the  mere  fact  that  these  writers 
are  realistic.  The  poor  have  many  other  vices, 
but,  at  least,  they  are  never  realistic.  The  poor 
are  melodramatic  and  romantic  in  grain;  the 
poor  all  believe  in  high  moral  platitudes  and 
copy-book  maxims;  probably  this  is  the  ultimate 
meaning  of  the  great  saying,  "Blessed  are  the 
poor."  Blessed  are  the  poor,  for  they  are 
always  making  life,  or  trying  to  make  life  like 
an  Adelphi  play.  Some  innocent  educational- 
ists and  philanthropists  (for  even  philanthropists 
can  be  innocent)  have  expressed  a  grave  aston- 
ishment that  the  masses  prefer  shilling  shockers 
to  scientific  treatises  and  melodramas  to  prob- 
lem plays.  The  reason  is  very  simple.  The 
realistic  story  is  certainly  more  artistic  than  the 
melodramatic  story.  If  what  you  desire  is  deft 
handling,  delicate  proportions,  a  unity  of  artistic 
atmosphere,  the  realistic  story  has  a  full  advan- 
tage over  the  melodrama.  In  everything  that 
is  light  and  bright  and  ornamental  the  realistic 
story  has  a  full  advantage  over  the  melodrama. 
But,  at  least,  the  melodrama  has  one  indispu- 
table advantage  over  the  realistic  story.    The 

282 


Slum  Novelists  and  the  Slums 

melodrama  is  much  more  like  life.  It  is  much 
more  like  man,  and  especially  the  poor  man. 
It  is  very  banal  and  very  inartistic  when  a 
poor  woman  at  the  Adelphi  says,  ^^Do  you 
think  I  will  sell  my  own  child?"  But  poor 
women  in  the  Battersea  High  Road  do  say, 
*'Do  you  think  I  will  sell  my  own  child?" 
They  say  it  on  every  available  occasion;  you  can 
hear  a  sort  of  murmur  or  babble  of  it  all  the 
way  down  the  street.  It  is  very  stale  and  weak 
dramatic  art  (if  that  is  all)  when  the  workman 
confronts  his  master  and  says,  "I'm  a  man." 
But  a  workman  does  say  "I'm  a  man"  two  or 
three  times  every  day.  In  fact,  it  is  tedious, 
possibly,  to  hear  poor  men  being  melodramatic 
behind  the  footlights;  but  that  is  because  one 
can  always  hear  them  being  melodramatic  in 
the  street  outside.  In  short,  melodrama,  if  it 
is  dull,  is  dull  because  it  is  too  accurate.  Some- 
what the  same  problem  exists  in  the  case  of 
stories  about  schoolboys.  Mr.  Kipling's  "  Stalky 
and  Co."  is  much  more  amusing  (if  you  are 
talking  about  amusement)  than  the  late  Dean 
Farrar's  "Eric;  or.  Little  by  Little."  But 
"Eric"  is  immeasurably  more  like  real  school- 
life.  For  real  school-life,  real  boyhood,  is  full 
of  the  things  of  which  Eric  is  full  —  priggish- 
ness,  a  crude  piety,  a  silly  sin,  a  weak  but 

283 


Heretics 


continual  attempt  at  the  heroic,  in  a  word, 
melodrama.  And  if  we  wish  to  lay  a  firm  basis 
for  any  efforts  to  help  the  poor,  we  must  not 
become  realistic  and  see  them  from  the  outside. 
We  must  become  melodramatic,  and  see  them 
from  the  inside.  The  novelist  must  not  take 
out  his  notebook  and  say,  "I  am  an  expert." 
No ;  he  must  imitate  the  workman  in  the  Adelphi 
play.  He  must  slap  himself  on  the  chest  and 
say,  ^^I  am  a  man." 


XX  —  Conclvding  Remarks  on  the  Impor- 
tance of  Orthodoxy 

WHETHER  the  human  mind  can 
advance  or  not,  is  a  question  too 
little  discussed,  for  nothing  can 
be  more  dangerous  than  to  found 
our  social  philosophy  on  any  theory  which  is 
debatable  but  has  not  been  debated.  But  if 
we  assume,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  there 
has  been  in  the  past,  or  will  be  in  the  future, 
such  a  thing  as  a  growth  or  improvement  of 
the  human  mind  itself,  there  still  remains  a 
very  sharp  objection  to  be  raised  against  the 
modem  version  of  that  improvement.  The 
vice  of  the  modem  notion  of  mental  progress 
is  that  it  is  always  something  concerned  with 
the  breaking  of  bonds,  the  effacing  of  bounda- 
ries, the  casting  away  of  dogmas.  But  if  there 
be  such  a  thing  as  mental  growth,  it  must  mean 
the  growth  into  more  and  more  definite  convic- 
tions, into  more  and  more  -dogmas.  The^ 
human  brain  is  a  machine  for  coming  to  con- 
clusions; if  it  cannot  come  to  conclusions  it  is 
msty.  When  we  hear  of  a  man  too  clever  to 
believe,  we  are  hearing  of  something  having 


Heretics 


almost  the  character  of  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
It  is  like  hearing  of  a  nail  that  was  too  good  to 
hold  down  a  carpet;  or  a  bolt  that  was  too  strong 
to  keep  a  door  shut.  Man  can  hardly  be  de- 
fined, after  the  fashion  of  Carlyle,  as  an  animal 
who  makes  tools;  ants  and  beavers  and  many 
other  animals  make  tools,  in  the  sense  that  they 
make  an  apparatus.  Man  can  be  defined  as 
an  animal  that  makes  dogmas.  As  he  piles 
doctrine  on  doctrine  and  conclusion  on  con- 
clusion in  the  formation  of  some  tremendous 
scheme  of  philosophy  and  religion,  he  is,  in  the 
only  legitimate  sense  of  which  the  expression 
is  capable,  becoming  more  and  more  human. 
When  he  drops  one  doctrine  after  another  in  a 
refined  scepticism,  when  he  declines  to  tie  him- 
self to  a  system,  when  he  says  that  he  has 
outgrown  definitions,  when  he  says  that  he 
disbelieves  in  finality,  when,  in  his  own  imagi- 
nation, he  sits  as  God,  holding  no  form  of  creed 
but  contemplating  all,  then  he  is  by  that  very 
process  sinking  slowly  backwards  into  the 
vagueness  of  the  vagrant  animals  and  the 
unconsciousness  of  the  grass.  Trees  have  no 
dogmas.    Turnips  are  singularly  broad-minde^-^ 

If  then,  I  repeat,  there  is  to  be  mental  ad- 
vance, it  must  be  mental  advance  in  the  con- 
struction of  a  definite  philosophy  of  life./"  And 

386  / 


Concluding  Remarks 


that  philosophy  of  life  must  be  right  and  the 
other  philosophies  wrong.  Now  of  all,  or 
nearly  all,  the  able  modern  writers  whom  I 
have  briefly  studied  in  this  book,  this  is  espe- 
cially and  pleasingly  true,  that  they  do  each  of 
them  have  a  constructive  and  affirmative  view, 
and  that  they  do  take  it  seriously  and  ask  us 
to  take  it  seriously.  There  is  nothing  merely 
sceptically  progressive  about  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling.  There  is  nothing  in  the  least  broad- 
minded  about  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw.  The  pa- 
ganism of  Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  is  more  grave 
than  any  Christianity.  Even  the  opportunism 
of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  is  more  dogmatic  than  the 
idealism  of  anybody  else.  Somebody  com- 
plained, I  think,  to  Matthew  Arnold  that  he 
was  getting  as  dogmatic  as  Carlyle.  He  replied, 
*^That  may  be  true;  but  you  overlook  an  ob- 
vious difference.  I  am  dogmatic  and  right, 
and  Carlyle  is  dogmatic  and  wrong."  The 
strong  humour  of  the  remark  ought  not  to 
disguise  from  us  its  everlasting  seriousness  and 
common  sense;  no  man  ought  to  write  at  all, 
or  even  to  speak  at  all,  unless  he  thinks  that 
he  is  in  truth  and  the  other  man  in  error.  In 
similar  style,  I  hold  that  I  am  dogmatic  and 
right,  whUe  Mr.  Shaw  is  dogmatic  and  wrong. 
But  my  main  point,  at  present,  is  to  notice  that 

287 


Heretics 


the  chief  among  these  writers  I  have  discussed 
do  most  sanely  and  courageously  offer  them- 
selves as  dogmatists,  as  founders  of  a  system. 
It  may  be  true  that  the  thing  in  Mr.  Shav^  most 
interesting  to  me,  is  the  fact  that  Mr.  Shaw  is 
wrong.  But  it  is  equally  true  that  the  thing 
in  Mr.  Shaw  most  interesting  to  himself,  is  the 
fact  that  Mr.  Shaw  is  right.  Mr.  Shaw  may 
have  none  with  him  but  himself;  but  it  is  not 
for  himself  he  cares.  It  is  for  the  vast  and 
universal  church,  of  which  he  is  the  only 
member. 

The  two  typical  men  of  genius  whom  I  have 
mentioned  here,  and  with  whose  names  I  have 
begun  this  book,  are  very  symbolic,  if  only 
because  they  have  shown  that  the  fiercest  dog- 
'matists  can  make  the  best  artists.  In  the  'fin 
de  Steele  atmosphere  every  one  was  crying  out 
that  literature  should  be  free  from  all  causes 
and  all  ethical  creeds.  Art  was  to  produce  only 
exquisite  workmanship,  and  it  was  especially 
the  note  of  those  days  to  demand  brilliant  plays 
and  brilliant  short  stories.  And  when  they  got 
them,  they  got  them  from  a  couple  of  moralists. 
The  best  short  stories  were  written  by  a  man 
trying  to  preach  Imperialism.  The  best  plays 
were  written  by  a  man  trying  to  preach  Social- 
ism.   All  the  art  of  all  the  artists  looked  tiny 

288 


Concluding  Remarks 


and  tedious  beside  the  art  which  was  a  by- 
product of  propaganda. 

The  reason,  indeed,  is  very  simple.    A  man 
cannot  be  wise  enough  to  be  a  great  artist 
without  being  wise  enough  to  wish  to  be  a 
philosopher.    A  man  cannot  have  the  energy 
to  produce  good  art  without  having  the  energy 
to  wish  to  pass  beyond  it.    A  small  artist  is 
content  with  art;  a  great  artist  is  content  with 
nothing  except  everything.     So  we  find  that 
when  real  forces,  good  or  bad,  like  Kipling  and 
G.  B.  S.,  enter  our  arena,  they  bring  with  them 
not  only  startling  and  arresting  art,  but  very 
startling  and  arresting  dogmas.    And  they  care 
even  more,  and  desire  us  to  care  even  more, 
about  their  startling  and  arresting  dogmas  than 
about  their  startling  and  arresting  art.    Mr. 
Shaw  is  a  good  dramatist,  but  what  he  desires 
more  than  anything  else  to  be  is  a  good  politi- 
cian.    Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  is  by  divine  caprice 
and  natural  genius  an  unconventional  poet;  but 
what  he  desires  more  than  anything  else  to  be 
is  a  conventional  poet.    He  desires  to  be  the 
poet  of  his  people,  bone  of  their  bone,  and  flesh 
of  their  flesh,  understanding  their  origins,  cele- 
brating their  destiny.    He  desires  to  be  Poet 
Laureate,  a  most  sensible  and  honourable  and 
public-spirited  desire.     Having  been  given  by 

289 


Heretics 


the  gods  originality  —  that  is,  disagreement  with 
others  —  he  desires  divinely  to  agree  with  them. 
But  the  most  striking  instance  of  all,  more 
striking,  I  think,  even  than  either  of  these,  is 
the  instance  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells.  He  began  in 
a  sort  of  insane  infancy  of  pure  art.  He  began 
by  making  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth,  with 
the  same  irresponsible  instinct  by  which  men 
buy  a  new  necktie  or  button-hole.  He  began 
by  trifling  with  the  stars  and  systems  in  order 
to  make  ephemeral  anecdotes;  he  killed  the 
universe  for  a  joke.  He  has  since  become  more 
and  more  serious,  and  has  become,  as  men 
inevitably  do  when  they  become  more  and  more 
serious,  more  and  more  parochial.  He  was 
frivolous  about  the  twilight  of  the  gods;  but 
he  is  serious  about  the  London  omnibus.  He 
was  careless  in  ^^The  Time  Machine,"  for  that 
dealt  only  with  the  destiny  of  all  things;  but 
he  is  careful,  and  even  cautious,  in  ^'Mankind 
in  the  Making,"  for  that  deals  with  the  day 
after  to-morrow.  He  began  with  the  end  of 
the  world,  and  that  was  easy.  Now  he  has 
gone  on  to  the  beginning  of  the  world,  and  that 
is  difficult.  But  the  main  result  of  all  this  is 
^'''^the  same  as  in  the  other  cases.  The  men  who 
have  really  been  the  bold  artists,  the  realistic 
artists,  the  uncompromising  artists,  are  the  men 

290 


Concluding  Remarks 


who  have  turned  out,  after  all,  to  be  writing 
*^with  a  purpose."  Suppose  that  any  cool  an^T^ 
cynical  art-critic,  any  art-critic  fully  impressed 
with  the  conviction  that  artists  were  greatest 
when  they  were  most  purely  artistic,  suppose 
that  a  man  who  professed  ably  a  humane 
aestheticism,  as  did  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm,  or  a 
cruel  aestheticism,  as  did  Mr.  W.  E.  Henley,  had 
cast  his  eye  over  the  whole  fictional  literature 
which  was  recent  in  the  year  1895,  and  had 
been  asked  to  select  the  three  most  vigorous 
and  promising  and  original  artists  and  artistic 
works,  he  would,  I  think,  most  certainly  have 
said  that  for  a  fine  artistic  audacity,  for  a  real 
artistic  delicacy,  or  for  a  whiff  of  true  novelty  in 
art,  the  things  that  stood  first  were  "Soldiers 
Three,"  by  a  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling;  "Arms 
and  the  Man,"  by  a  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw;  and 
"The  Time  Machine,"  by  a  man  called  Wells. 
And  all  these  men  have  shown  themselves 
ingrainedly  didactic.  You  may  express  the 
matter  if  you  will  by  saying  that  if  we  want 
doctrines  we  go  to  the  great  artists.  But  it  is 
clear  from  the  psychology  of  the  matter  that 
this  is  not  the  true  statement;  the  true  statement 
is  that  when  we  want  any  art  tolerably  brisk  ^ 
and  bold  we  have  to  go  to  the  doctrinaires. 
In  concluding  this  book,  therefore,  I  would 
291 


Heretics 


ask,  first  and  foremost,  that  men  such  as  these 
of  whom  I  have  spoken  should  not  be  insulted 
by  being  taken  for  artist's.  No  man  has  any 
right  whatever  merely  to  enjoy  the  work  of  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw;  he  might  as  well  enjoy  the 
invasion  of  his  country  by  the  French.  Mr. 
Shaw  writes  either  to  convince  or  to  enrage  us. 
No  man  has  any  business  to  be  a  Kiplingite 
without  being  a  politician,  and  an  Imperialist 
politician.  If  a  man  is  first  with  us,  it  should 
be  because  of  what  is  first  with  him.  If  a  man 
convinces  us  at  all,  it  should  be  by  his  convic- 
tions. If  we  hate  a  poem  of  Kipling's  from 
political  passion,  we  are  hating  it  for  the  same 
reason  that  the  poet  loved  it;  if  we  dislike  him 
because  of  his  opinions,  we  are  disliking  him 
for  the  best  of  all  possible  reasons.  If  a  man 
comes  into  Hyde  Park  to  preach  it  is  permissible 
to  hoot  him;  but  it  is  discourteous  to  applaud 
him  as  a  performing  bear.  And  an  artist  is 
only  a  performing  bear  compared  with  the 
meanest  man  who  fancies  he  has  anything  to 
say. 

There  is,  indeed,  one  class  of  modem  writers 
and  thinkers  who  cannot  altogether  be  over- 
looked in  this  question,  though  there  is  no  space 
here  for  a  lengthy  account  of  them,  which,  in- 
deed, to  confess  the  truth,  would  consist  chiefly 

292 


Concluding  Remarks 


of  abuse.  I  mean  those  who  get  over  all  these 
abysses  and  reconcile  all  these  wars  by  talking 
about  "aspects  of  truth,"  by  saying  that  the 
art  of  Kipling  represents  one  aspect  of  the 
truth,  and  the  art  of  William  Watson  another; 
the  art  of  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  one  aspect  of  the 
truth,  and  the  art  of  Mr.  Cunningham  Grahame 
another ;  the  art  of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  one  aspect, 
and  the  art  of  Mr.  Coventry  Patmore  (say) 
another.  I  will  only  say  here  that  this  seems 
to  me  an  evasion  which  has  not  even  had  the 
sense  to  disguise  itself  ingeniously  in  words. 
If  we  talk  of  a  certain  thing  being  an  aspect  of 
truth,  it  is  evident  that  we  claim  to  know  what 
is  truth;  just  as,  if  we  talk  of  the  hind  leg  of  a 
dog,  we  claim  to  know  what  is  a  dog.  Unfor- 
tunately, the  philosopher  who  talks  about  as- 
pects of  truth  generally  also  asks,  "Whatis^ 
truth?"  Frequently  even  he  denies  the  exist- 
ence of  truth,  or  says  it  is  inconceivable  by  the 
human  intelligence.  How,  then,  can  he  recog- 
nize its  aspects?  I  should  not  like  to  be  an 
artist  who  brought  an  architectural  sketch  to  a 
builder,  saying,  "This  is  the  south  aspect  of 
Sea- View  Cottage.  Sea- View  Cottage,  of  course, 
does  not  exist."  I  should  not  even  like  very 
much  to  have  to  explain,  under  such  circum- 
stances, that  Sea- View  Cottage  might  exist,  but 

293 


Heretics 


was  unthinkable  by  the  human  mind.  Nor 
should  I  like  any  better  to  be  the  bungling  and 
absurd  metaphysician  who  professed  to  be  able 
to  see  everywhere  the  aspects  of  a  truth  that  is 
not  there.  Of  course,  it  is  perfectly  obvious 
that  there  are  truths  in  Kipling,  that  there  are 
truths  in  Shaw  or  Wells.  But  the  degree  to 
which  we  can  perceive  them  depends  strictly 
upon  how  far  we  have  a  definite  conception 
inside  us  of  what  is  truth.  It  is  ludicrous  to 
suppose  that  the  more  sceptical  we  are  the  more 
we  see  good  in  everything.  It  is  clear  that  the 
more  we  are  certain  what  good  is,  the  more  we 
shall  see  good  in  everything. 

I  plead,  then,  that  we  should  agree  or  dis- 
agree with  these  men.  I  plead  that  we  should 
agree  with  them  at  least  in  having  an  abstract 
belief.  But  I  know  that  there  are  current  in 
the  modem  world  many  vague  objections  to 
having  an  abstract  belief,  and  I  feel  that  we 
shall  not  get  any  further  until  we  have  dealt 
with  some  of  them.  The  first  objection  is 
easily  stated. 

A  common  hesitation  in  our  day  touching 
the  use  of  extreme  convictions  is  a  sort  of  notion 
that  extreme  convictions,  specially  upon  cosmic 
matters,  have  been  responsible  in  the  past  for 
the  thing  which  is  called  bigotry.    But  a  very 

294 


Concluding  Remarks 


small  amount  of  direct  experience  will  dissipate 
this  view.  In  real  life  the  people  who  are  most 
bigoted  are  the  people  who  have  no  convictions 
at  all.  The  economists  of  the  Manchester 
school  who  disagree  with  Socialism  take  Social- 
ism seriously.  It  is  the  young  man  in  Bond 
Street,  who  does  not  know  what  socialism 
means,  much  less  whether  he  agrees  with  it, 
who  is  quite  certain  that  these  socialist  fellows 
are  making  a  fuss  about  nothing.  The  man 
who  understands  the  Calvinist  philosophy 
enough  to  agree  with  it  must  understand  the 
Catholic  philosophy  in  order  to  disagree  with 
it.  It  is  the  vague  modem  who  is  not  at  all 
certain  what  is  right  who  is  most  certain  that 
Dante  was  wrong.  The  serious  opponent  of- 
the  Latin  Church  in  history,  even  in  the  act 
of  showing  that  it  produced  great  infamies, 
must  know  that  it  produced  great  saints.  It 
is  the  hard-headed  stockbroker,  who  knows  no 
history  and  believes  no  religion,  who  is,  never- 
theless, perfectly  convinced  that  all  these  priests 
are  knaves.  The  Salvationist  at  the  Marble 
Arch  may  be  bigoted,  but  he  is  not  too  bigoted 
to  yearn  from  a  common  human  kinship  after 
the  dandy  on  church  parade.  But  the  dandy 
on  church  parade  is  so  bigoted  that  he  does  not 
in  the  least  yearn  after  the  Salvationist  at  the 

295 


Heretics 


Marble  Arch.  Bigotry  may  be  roughly  defined 
as  the  anger  of  men  who  have  no  opinions.  It 
is  the  resistance  offered  to  definite  ideas  by  that 
I  vague  bulk  of  people  whose  ideas  are  indefinite, 
to  excess.  Bigotry  may  be  called  the  appalling 
frenzy  of  the  indilEferent.  This  frenzy  of  the  in- 
different is  in  truth  a  terrible  thing ;  it  has  made  all 
monstrous  and  widely  pervading  persecutions. 
In  this  degree  it  was  not  the  people  who  cared 
who  ever  persecuted;  the  people  who  cared  were 
not  sufficiently  numerous.  It  was  the  people 
who  did  not  care  who  filled  the  world  with 
fire  and  oppression.  It  was  the  hands  of  the 
indifferent  that  lit  the  faggots;  it  was  the  hands 
of  the  indifferent  that  turned  the  rack.  There 
have  come  some  persecutions  out  of  the  pain  of 
a  passionate  certainty;  but  these  produced,  not 
bigotry,  but  fanaticism  —  a  very  different  and 
a  somewhat  admirable  thing.  Bigotry  in  the 
main  has  always  been  the  pervading  omnipo- 
tence of  those  who  do  not  care  crushing  out 
those  who  care  in  darkness  and  blood. 

There  are  people,  however,  who  dig  some- 
what deeper  than  this  into  the  possible  evils  of 
dogma.  It  is  felt  by  many  that  strong  philo- 
sophical conviction,  while  it  does  not  (as  they 
perceive)  produce  that  sluggish  and  fundamen- 
tally frivolous  condition  which  we  call  bigotry, 

996 


Concluding  Remarks 


does  produce  a  certain  concentration,  exaggera- 
tion, and  moral  impatience,  which  we  may  agree 
to  call  fanaticism.  They  say,  in  brief,  that 
ideas  are  dangerous  things.  In  politics,  for 
example,  it  is  commonly  urged  against  a  man 
like  Mr.  Balfour,  or  against  a  man  like  Mr. 
John  Morley,  that  a  wealth  of  ideas  is  danger- 
ous. The  true  doctrine  on  this  point,  again, 
is  surely  not  very  difficult  to  state.  Ideas  are 
dangerous,  but  the  man  to  whom  they  are  least 
dangerous  is  the  man  of  ideas.  He  is  acquainted 
with  ideas,  and  moves  among  them  like  a  lion- 
tamer.  Ideas  are  dangerous,  but  the  man  to 
whom  they  are  most  dangerous  is  the  man  of 
no  ideas.  The  man  of  no  ideas  will  find  the 
first  idea  fly  to  his  head  like  wine  to  the  head 
of  a  teetotaller.  It  is  a  common  error,  I  think, 
among  the  Radical  idealists  of  my  own  party 
and  period  to  suggest  that  financiers  and  busi- 
ness men  are  a  danger  to  the  empire  because 
they  are  so  sordid  or  so  materialistic.  The 
truth  is  that  financiers  and  business  men  are  a 
danger  to  the  empire  because  they  can  be  senti- 
mental about  any  sentiment,  and  idealistic 
about  any  ideal,  any  ideal  that  they  find  lying 
about.  Just  as  a  boy  who  has  not  known  much 
of  women  is  apt  too  easily  to  take  a  woman  for 
the  woman,  so  these  practical  men,  unaccus- 

297 


Heretics 


tomed  to  causes,  are  always  inclined  to  think 
that  if  a  thing  is  proved  to  be  an  ideal  it  is 
proved  to  be  the  ideal.  Many,  for  example, 
avowedly  followed  Cecil  Rhodes  because  he  had 
a  vision.  They  might  as  well  have  followed 
him  because  he  had  a  nose;  a  man  without  some 
kind  of  dream  of  perfection  is  quite  as  much  of 
a  monstrosity  as  a  noseless  man.  People  say 
of  such  a  figure,  in  almost  feverish  whispers, 
''He  knows  his  own  mind,"  which  is  exactly  like 
saying  in  equally  feverish  whispers,  ''He  blows 
his  own  nose."  Human  nature  simply  cannot 
subsist  without  a  hope  and  aim  of  some  kind; 
as  the  sanity  of  the  Old  Testament  truly  said, 
where  there  is  no  vision  the  people  perisheth. 
But  it  is  precisely  because  an  ideal  is  necessary 
to  man  that  the  man  without  ideals  is  in  per- 
manent danger  of  fanaticism.  There  is  nothing 
which  is  so  likely  to  leave  a  man  open  to  the 
sudden  and  irresistible  inroad  of  an  unbalanced 
vision  as  the  cultivation  of  business  habits.  All 
of  us  know  angular  business  men  who  think 
that  the  earth  is  flat,  or  that  Mr.  Kruger  was  at 
the  head  of  a  great  military  despotism,  or  that 
men  are  graminivorous,  or  that  Bacon  wrote 
Shakespeare.  Religious  and  philosophical  be- 
liefs are,  indeed,  as  dangerous  as  fire,  and 
nothing  can  take  from  them  that  beauty  of 

298 


Concluding  Remarks 


danger.     But  there  is  only  one  way  of  really 

guarding  ourselves  against  the  excessive  danger 

of  them,  and  that  is  to  be  steeped  in  philosophy 
and  soaked  in  religion.  ~  ~  \/ 

Briefly,  then,  we  dismiss  the  two  opposite  i 
dangers  of  bigotry  and  fanaticism,  bigotry  which 
is  a  too  great  vagueness  and  fanaticism  which 
is  a  too  great  concentration.  We  say  that  the 
cure  for  the  bigot  is  belief;  we  say  that  the  cure 
for  the  idealist  is  ideas.  To  know  the  best 
theories  of  existence  and  to  choose  the  best 
from  them  (that  is,  to  the  best  of  our  own  strong 
conviction)  appears  to  us  the  proper  way  to  be 
neither  bigot  nor  fanatic,  but  something  more 
firm  than  a  bigot  and  more  terrible  than  a 
fanatic,  a  man  with  a  definite  opinion.  But 
that  definite  opinion  must  in  this  view  begin 
with  the  basic  matters  of  human  thought,  and 
these  must  not  be  dismissed  as  irrelevant,  as 
religion,  for  instance,  is  too  often  in  our  days 
dismissed  as  irrelevant.  Even  jf  _  we  think  re- 
ligion insoluble,  we  cannot  think  it  irrelevant. 
Even  if  we  ourselves  have  no  view  of  the  ulti- 
mate verities,  we  must  feel  that  wherever  such 
a  view  exists  in  a  man  it  must  be  more  important 
than  anything  else  in  him.  The  instant  that 
the  thing  ceases  to  be  the  unknowable,  it 
becomes  the  indispensable. 

«99 


Heretics 


There  can  be  no  doubt,  I  think,  that  the  idea 
does  exist  in  our  time  that  there  is  something 
narrow  or  irrelevant  or  even  mean  about  attack- 
ing a  man's  rehgion,  or  arguing  from  it  in 
matters  of  politics  or  ethics.  There  can  be 
quite  as  little  doubt  that  such  an  accusation  of 
narrowness  is  itself  almost  grotesquely  narrow. 
To  take  an  example  from  comparatively  current 
events:  we  all  know  that  it  was  not  uncommon 
for  a  man  to  be  considered  a  scarecrow  of 
bigotry  and  obscurantism  because  he  distrusted 
the  Japanese,  or  lamented  the  rise  of  the  Japa- 
nese, on  the  ground  that  the  Japanese  were 
Pagans.  Nobody  would  think  that  there  was 
anything  antiquated  or  fanatical  about  distrust- 
ing a  people  because  of  some  difference  between 
them  and  us  in  practice  or  political  machinery. 
Nobody  would  think  it  bigoted  to  say  of  a 
people,  '*I  distrust  their  influence  because  they 
are  Protectionists.''  No  one  would  think  it 
narrow  to  say,  ^'I  lament  their  rise  because  they 
are  Socialists,  or  Manchester  Individualists,  or 
strong  believers  in  militarism  and  conscrip- 
tion." A  difference  of  opinion  about  the  nature 
of  Parliaments  matters  very  much;  but  a  differ- 
ence of  opinion  about  the  nature  of  sin  does  not 
matter  at  all.  A  difference  of  opinion  about 
the  object  of -taxation  matters  very  much;  but 
300 


Concluding  Remarks 


a  difference  of  opinion  about  the  object  of  / 
human  existence  does  not  matter  at  all.  We  / 
have  a  right  to  distrust  a  man  who  is  in  a 
different  kind  of  municipality;  but  we  have  no 
right  to  mistrust  a  man  who  is  in  a  different 
kind  of  cosmos.  This  sort  of  enlightenment  is 
surely  about  the  most  unenlightened  that  it  is 
possible  to  imagine.  To  recur  to  the  phrase 
which  I  employed  earlier,  this  is  tantamount  to 
saying  that  everything  is  important  with  the 
exception  of  everything.  Religion  is  exactly 
the  thing  which  cannot  be  left  out  —  because 
it  includes  everything.  The  most  absent-minded 
person  cannot  well  pack  his  Gladstone-bag  and 
leave  out  the  bag.  We  have  a  general  view  of 
existence,  whether  we  like  it  or  not;  it  alters, 
or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  it  creates  and 
involves  everything  we  say  or  do,  whether  we 
like  it  or  not.  If  we  regard  the  Cosmos  as  a 
dream,  we  regard  the  Fiscal  Question  as  a 
dream.  If  we  regard  the  Cosmos  as  a  joke, 
we  regard  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  as  a  joke.  If 
everything  is  bad,  then  we  must  believe  (if  it 
be  possible)  that  beer  is  bad;  if  everything  be 
good,  we  are  forced  to  the  rather  fantastic  con- 
clusion that  scientific  philanthropy  is  good. 
Every  man  in  the  street  must  hold  a  metaphys- 
ical system,  and  hold  it  firmly.     The  utmost 

301 


Heretics 


possibility  is  that  he  may  have  held  it  so  firmly 
and  so  long  as  to  have  forgotten  all  about  its 
existence. 

This  latter  situation  is  certainly  possible;  in 
fact,  it  is  the  situation  of  the  whole  modem 
world.  The  modem  world  is  filled  with  men 
who  hold  dogmas  so  strongly  that  they  do  not 
evenjmow  that,  they  a^^  dogmas.  It  may  be 
said  even  that  the  modem  world,  as  a  corporate 
body,  holds  certain  dogmas  so  strongly  that  it 
does  not  know  that  they  are  dogmas.  It  may 
be  thought  "dogmatic,"  for  instance,  in  some 
circles  accounted  progressive,  to  assume  the 
perfection  or  improvement  of  man  in  another 
world.  But  it  is  not  thought  "dogmatic"  to 
assume  the  perfection  or  improvement  of  man 
in  this  world;  though  that  idea  of  progress  is 
quite  as  unproved  as  the  idea  of  immortality, 
and  from  a  rationalistic  point  of  view  quite  as 
improbable.  Progress  happens  to  be  one  of 
lour  dogmas,  and  a  dogma  means  a  thing  which 
is  not  thought  dogmatic.  Or,  again,  we  see 
nothing  "dogmatic"  in  the  inspiring,  but  cer- 
tainly most  startling,  theory  of  physical  science, 
that  we  should  collect  facts  for  the  sake  of  facts, 
even  though  they  seem  as  useless  as  sticks  and 
straws.  This  is  a  great  and  suggestive  idea, 
and  its  utility  may,  if  you  will,   be  proving 

302 


Concluding  Remarks 


itself,  but  its  utility  is,  in  the  abstract,  quite  as 
disputable  as  the  utility  of  that  calling  on 
oracles  or  consulting  shrines  which  is  also  said 
to  prove  itself.  Thus,  because  we  are  not  in  a 
civilization  which  believes  strongly  in  oracles  or 
sacred  places,  we  see  the  full  frenzy  of  those  who 
killed  themselves  to  find  the  sepulchre  of  Christ. 
But  being  in  a  civilization  which  does  believe  in 
this  dogma  of  fact  for  facts'  sake,  we  do  not  see 
the  full  frenzy  of  those  who  kill  themselves  to 
find  the  North  Pole.  I  am  not  speaking  of  a 
tenable  ultimate  utility  which  is  true  both  of 
the  Crusades  and  the  polar  explorations.  I 
mean  merely  that  we  do  see  the  superficial  and 
aesthetic  singularity,  the  startling  quality,  about 
the  idea  of  men  crossing  a  continent  with  armies 
to  conquer  the  place  where  a  man  died.  But 
we  do  not  see  the  aesthetic  singularity  and 
startling  quality  of  men  dying  in  agonies  to 
find  a  place  where  no  man  can  live  —  a  place 
only  interesting  because  it  is  supposed  to  be 
the  meeting-place  of  some  lines  that  do  not 
exist. 

Let  us,  then,  go  upon  a  long  journey  and 
enter  on  a  dreadful  search.  Let  us,  at  least, 
dig^  and  seek  till  we  have  discovered  our  own 
opinions:  The  dogmas  we  really  hold  are  far 
more  fantastic,  and,  perhaps,  far  more  beautiful 

303 


Heretics 


than  we  think.  In  the  course  of  these  essays 
I  fear  that  I  have  spoken  from  time  to  time 
of  rationahsts  and  rationalism,  and  that  in  a 
disparaging  sense.  Being  full  of  that  kindliness 
which  should  come  at  the  end  of  everything, 
even  of  a  book,  I  apologize  to  the  rationalists 
even  for  calling  them  rationalists.  There^are^ 
no  rationalists.  We  all  believe  fairy-tales,  and 
live  in  them.  Some,  with  a  sumptuous  literary 
turn,  believe  in  the  existence  of  the  lady  clothed 
with  the  sun.  Some,  with  a  more  rustic,  elvish 
instinct,  like  Mr.  McCabe,  believe  merely  in 
the  impossible  sun  itself.  Some  hold  the  un- 
demonstrable  dogma  of  the  existence  of  God; 
some  the  equally  undemonstrable  dogma  of  the 
existence  of  the  man  next  door. 

Truths  turn  into  dogmas  the  instant  that 
they  are  disputed.  Thus  every  man  who  utters 
a  doubt  defines  a  religion.  And  the  scepticism 
of  our  time  does  not  really  destroy  the  beliefs, 
rather  it  creates  them;  gives  them  their  limits 
and  their  plain  and  defiant  shape.  We  who  are 
Liberals  once  held  Liberalism  lightly  as  a 
truism.  Now  it  has  been  disputed,  and  we 
hold  it  fiercely  as  a  faith.  We  who  believe  in 
patriotism  once  thought  patriotism  to  be  reason- 
able, and  thought  little  more  about  it.  Now 
we  know  it  to  be  unreasonable,  and  know  it  to 

304 


C oncluding  Remarks 


be  right.  We  who  are  Christians  never  knew 
the  great  philosophic  common  sense  which 
inheres  in  that  mystery  until  the  anti-Christian 
writers  pointed  it  out  to  us.  The  great  march 
of  mental  destruction  will  go  on.  Everything 
will  be  denied.  Everything  will  become  a 
creed.  It  is  a  reasonable  position  to  deny  the 
stones  in  the  street ;  it  will  be  a  religious  dogma 
to  assert  them.  It  is  a  rational  thesis  that  we 
are  all  in  a  dream;  it  will  be  a  mystical  sanity 
to  say  that  we  are  all  awake.  Fires  will  be 
kindled  to  testify  that  two  and  two  make  four. 
Swords  will  be  drawn  to  prove  that  leaves  are 
green  in  summer.  We  shall  be  left  defending, 
not  only  the  incredible  virtues  and  sanities  of 
human  life,  but  something  more  incredible  still, 
this  huge  impossible  universe  which  stares  us 
in  the  face.  We  shall  fight  for  visible  prodigies 
as  if  they  were  invisible.  We  shall  look  on  the 
impossible  grass  and  the  skies  with  a  strange 
courage.  We  shall  be  of  those  who  have  seen 
and  yet  have  believed. 


THE   END. 


305 


rURN 


CIRCULATION  DEPARTMENT 

202  AAqin  Library 


AN  PERIOD  1 
10ME  USE 

2 

3 

5 

6 

ML  BOOKS  MAY  BE  RECALLED  AFTER  7  DAYS 

Renewals  and  Recharges  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  the  due  date. 

Sooks  may  be  Renewed  by  calling     642-3405. 

DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


ItECOH  JUMi:.'87 


se/tf^o/tf 


nx 


fm-tt 


Mi 


Mr 


BERKELE 


iRM  NO.  DD6, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  BERKELEY 
BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


GENERAL  LIBRARY -U.C.  BERKELEY 


V- 


^'a 


K  --li  r. 


C^£^ 


*     I 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


